At the end of February, the Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar, notoriously close to Hezbollah, reported that one of the most important names of the leadership of the repressive Syrian security apparatuses, Ali Mamlouk, who appears in the European blacklist for those responsible for crimes against humanity, is said to have arrived in Rome to discuss coordination under the name of “fighting terrorism”, expanding a relationship that already exists between the intelligence departments of the two countries. According to Al Akhbar and reported by the prestigious think tank Carnegie Middle East Center, Mamlouk is said to have met at the Viminale, home of the Italian Ministry of the Interior, the heads of the ministry itself and of the Agency for Information and External Security. The meeting is said to have been facilitated by the Lebanese Director of General Security Abbas Ibrahim, who has always been very close to Hezbollah and who seems to have also convinced Rome to send a private plane to pick up the powerful Syrian intelligence chief from Damascus.

The newspapers quoted in fact indicate that Mamlouk’s aim is to collaborate in fighting terrorism in order to obtain support from Italy in order to pressure the EU into softening the European Community position towards the Syrian regime. It is widely known that in recent years Mamlouk has made visits aimed at coordination in combating terrorism in many Arab capitals, especially in the Gulf countries. Therefore, it is conceivable that it became necessary for the regime to be accredited or to boast having special and direct relations also with European countries.

Although the news has been reported by various Arab and international media, there is no trace of it in the Italian media, focused on the political elections, and there has been no confirmation or denial by the Italian government or intelligence in this regard.

Considering as a very serious matter the possibility that our Government and our institutions have agreed to meet an individual who is included in all the international lists of those responsible for crimes against humanity, and in particular on the EU list (see EU regulations No. 504/2011 of 23 May 2011 and No. 442/2011):

– We ask the Italian authorities, and in particular the Ministry of the Interior and the Foreign Affairs Ministry and AISE to verify the truthfulness of what has been reported about this visit, and that, if it is fake news, as we hope it will be, they will be able to release a statement as such.

– We also ask the President of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, to verify compliance with the European regulations concerning the sanctions against the perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated in Syria, in particular in the context of the upcoming debate regarding Syria to be held Tuesday, 13 March, to the EP in Strasbourg, in the presence of the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini.

We also ask that the question of Ali Mamlouk’s visit and its consequences be adequately included in the resolution that the EP will approve in Strasbourg on 15 March, the anniversary of the Syrian Revolution for Dignity and Democracy.

Who is Ali Mamlouk?

Key man of the Syrian regime since the birth of Hezbollah in Lebanon, operation in which he cooperated in person, the little-known head of Syrian Political Security, became a leading figure in 2005, the year of the murder of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, according to international court investigators on Syrian mandate and by Hezbollah militia. A methodology that he is quite familiar with.

After 2005 he became a key figure on another border, the Iraqi one. As reported by Limes, the Italian journal of geopolitics: “From there, according to various converging sources, he took over the task of organising the journeys of Syrian “jihadist” militias to Iraq in an anti-American function and to show that Damascus has cards to play on the regional table. The Anglo-American invasion began just two years prior to that, and the Iraqi insurgency attracted foreign fighters. Mamlouk coordinated recruitment, starting from Syrian prisons. He himself had helped to fill the cells of presumed or true fundamentalists (today they would be called radicalised) since the mid-80s, and the files were already on his table. It is estimated that in those years the Syrian government sent thousands of jihadists to Iraq to support Iraqi “resistance”. Not only Syrians, also men of other nationalities who used the Syrian territory as a natural bridge to the Anbar and Mesopotamia. ”

One wonders if they are the same bombers who struck Italian forces in Nāṣiriya in November 2003, given the similarities with other attacks that occurred in Lebanon and that a vein of the investigation led straight to Beirut.

The alleged mediation of the Lebanese Director of General Security Abbas Ibrahim then raises further questions, given that Mamlouk is accused of terrorism by the judiciary of the country of the Cedars, being implicated in many terrorist attacks in Lebanon, not least that which should have led to the elimination of the Maronite Patriarch and cardinal of the Catholic Church, His Beatitude Beshara Rai.

Interview with Mahmoud al-Basha by Francesco Petronella, previously published in the print version of Sedici Pagine Magazine

Q: A year ago, around Christmastime, the city of Aleppo was besieged, bombed and then evacuated. What are your memories of those days?

A: I still perfectly remember everything that happened. The insane bombardment of the Assad regime and the Russians struck the city with weapons, even ones that are internationally prohibited. I still remember when the Russians started to use thermobaric missiles and bunker busters. At that time, I was doing whatever I could to allow the international media to understand what was going on in the city. I worked a great deal with them to show and document how the Russians and the Assad regime were killing innocent civilians. They took aim at all the hospitals and water tanks, without allowing any humanitarian aid to enter into the city under siege. In this desperate situation, the Russian air raids struck my neighbourhood, causing the death of 31 civilians. One of the was my brother Anas.

Anas al-Basha, the “clown” of Aleppo

Anas refused to leave the city before the siege started. I still remember his answer when I begged him to leave as soon as he could: “I’m not going to leave the city, I don’t want the children of Aleppo to feel so sad, I want to do something for them so that they smile and I want to help the poor civilians who are still living here.”

Only three days before he was killed, Anas was recording a voice message for me through WhatsApp to explain to me what the situation was like and how he was helping the people. “Now, I’m going to the bakery – he said – we’re going to distribute bread to the people who haven’t got anything to eat.” Then, all of a sudden, there was the terrible noise of an explosion that was just steps away from him. “Can you hear what an awful life we are living?” he asked me. “The Russian raids are striking everything, every single day.”

When he died, my family and I were unable to even give him our final goodbyes. My friends buried him in Aleppo with other innocent people, killed like he was.

Q: How has life in Aleppo changed a year since then?

Life hasn’t changed since last year. The only difference is that there are no longer the bombing raids, which ceased once the Assad forces controlled the entire city. The majority of the urban fabric is destroyed, simply rubble. The regime was unable to guarantee a better life, or even a normal life, to the people. In Aleppo, before the war, there were around 5 million people. Today, there are only 2 million. The majority of the civilian population has become homeless or has sought refuge in other parts of Syria or abroad. The persons who live in the city today have returned under the control of regime intelligence, without freedom or rights. Most of the young people have fled Syria in order to avoid forced recruitment in the regime army. Today, Aleppo is swarming with militias that come from various countries. Everywhere you look you see Russian, Iranian and Iraqi flags. The Assad regime no longer has any decisional power, Russia and Iran are the ones who hold the reins, especially in the military and political sphere.

Q: After what took place in Aleppo a year ago, how has the relationship between Christians and Muslims changed in the city and in the entire country?

A: The relationship between Christians and Muslims has changed. As I said before, around 3 million people had left the city from the start of the war, among them, many Christians. They weren’t really involved in the war because it was very easy for them to get visas for the EU or the USA. The strategy of the Assad regime, since the start of the Syrian revolution, was that of taking advantage of the minorities and using them as a pawn, where they would pretend for the Western countries that they were the only ones protecting them. There are many Christians against the Assad regime, but they left Syria. Many of them play an active role in the political Syrian opposition.

Q: What do you think life will be like in Aleppo and in Syria a year from now?

A: I think it will be exactly the same as it is right now. Aleppo will remain a ghost town and a place of destruction. There is no water, no electricity. There is no hope and no future in the eyes of the civilians. Very many families of Aleppo have become refugees in different countries. Hundreds of extended families are no longer together because of this war.

The city of Aleppo will return to be full of life only when the war ends. When the regime that has killed hundreds of thousands of persons will answer before the international courts of justice. When 500 thousand detainees are freed from the military prisons. When the international community will finally judge Bashar al-Assad for having used chemical weapons against innocent civilians. Aleppo will once again be a beautiful place only when those who have killed my brother Anas are facing Justice and are no longer able to kill persons, to kill children.

Mahmoud al-Basha is a Syrian journalist, fixer and activist. Hailing from Aleppo, Mahmoud currently lives in Turkey where he continues his work to raise awareness of the suffering and the terrible situation of his country.

Following the Iranian people’s nationwide protests to secure freedom as the legitimate right of the people of Iran, which began on December 28, 2017, the dictatorship ruling Iran started the massacre of unarmed and defenseless demonstrators and massive arrest and torture of protesters in prisons; acts that are a clear indication of a crime against humanity, and the United Nations is responsible to confront it. According to Iranian regime officials, 90% of the detainees are young people under the age of 25. On January 4, 2018, Amnesty International called for the end of the killing and arrest of demonstrators in Iran. On January 3, 2018, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights warned the Iranian regime about repressive measures and said that Iranian regime officials should respect the rights of all demonstrators and detainees, including their right to life and security.

We, the undersigned, urge you to take effective action and make binding decisions for the unconditional release of thousands of arrested demonstrators in Iran, and warn the Iranian regime that, if this process continues, more serious actions will be adopted by the United Nations.

Rate this:

We are used to Ken O’Keefe addressing his public and followers, and the world itself, in terms of his revelation of a simple fix to solve all the world’s problems. Yes, ALL of them. Ken says that “Just by changing this one thing”, there would be “world class education, infrastructure, everything that a healthy society requires can be had, even in the most corrupt African country”. He is sure that with JUST THIS ONE THING we can “solve every other problem!” and, most importantly, given Ken’s precedents, there will be an “Abundant supply of money for all of us”.

In a video from last year, but which has been making the rounds in recent days with the title “How to Solve all the problems in the world” (you can’t say he sets low goals), he presents his idea in the tried and true format of talking head rant. He puts out some vague concepts, clearly sure that his followers may not really know how banking and finance and currency systems work. First of all, Ken begins with defining who is making the problems in the world exist, and he comes upon a SHOCKING discovery…. He certainly is the first to ever realise that financial systems hold enormous power and control. We await his next video release when he reveals to us that night follows day.

But, don’t be discouraged from watching it by realising that he holds no secret truths and solutions. The actual video is really worth it for the freak moments where he espouses his theories (and we will later learn, he borrows them from a historical figure). He allows debate among reasonable people to discuss “who” literally runs the world… he knows, but he ain’t sayin’ in this video, that information is available elsewhere. This current video has to circulate among the new cultists he’s trying to woo, court, influence and ultimately fleece.

He’s going for a new target after his World Citizen Solution fizzled into absolutely nothing except a spectacular exposure by all of his former cohorts about it being a pyramid scheme and at any rate, without any basis in reality. All of this while Ken has been based out of Dominica, with speaking engagements in white-power summer jambourees to keep the finances liquid. He has pretty much drained the old target, so he can rebrand as an economics expert, particularly to those who are into fiat currency and to those who suddenly are interested in Bitcoin, because it seems to hold some promise of what really matters to Ken, an “abundant supply of money”.

So, he doesn’t say WHO runs the world, but you can still be debate whether it’s the “Jesuits, Reptilians, Illuminati or Freemasons”, all of course the NATURAL subjects in any debate, right? Well, among Icke fans, certainly.

Ken talks about loans, which is basically how banks finance themselves, only having to keep a 10% reserve of the money deposited, the banking system certainly has devised a clever way to make money with other people’s money. But, people who actually have money aren’t forced into putting it in banks, nor in asking for loans. Ken surely doesn’t need to ask for a loan, he asks his followers to finance his lifestyle, which, as noted, includes purchase of land and international travel.

Now, after Ken does this preamble, things get more interesting: “Those of us who cannot be bought because we operate on a level that goes way beyond the material” (so much for his abundant supply of money and constant crowdfunding efforts), “we are not rewarded for such behaviour” (because you need a reward for not being bought and various other ethical behaviour?) “we are punished. We reward the paedophiles, we reward the liars, people with no morals at all.” (pregnant pause).

So, how can those running things (finance, right?) keep control on everything? By sex video tapes of people who have political power! Get ready for it: “Maybe Barack Obama is gay. Maybe we have a videotape of him having sex with another man.” Then he continues, “Maybe we have videos of political leaders having sex with little boys or little girls. If I was (sic) in charge of the world and I was (sic) a psychopath (cough cough) and completely drunk on my own power, you can bet damn sure that’s what I would do.”

Never mind that this really doesn’t have anything to do with the argument at all, unless it makes some sense to those who debate whether it’s the Illuminati or the Jesuits or the Jews who control everything. Attempting to fit it into the KOK world, we do learn that it is ALREADY his modus operandi when he defends himself against those attacking him. After he finishes accusing opponents of being traitors, infiltrates and paid shills to thwart his mission, he accuses them of suffering from jealousy or some other uncontrollable emotional connection to him, and he is required to counter them as was illustrated in his example above. A recent example is someone who was once his fan and who went public with a post against him and was “outed” by him on the basis of “sex tapes” he found of her in some ritual she was high priestess of (bear in mind the world he moves in, folks). So, he’s not a psychopath, he just acts like one. His own rebuttal is here, where he dubs his former follower Jew Nice.

Now, we get to the meat of his proposal, “Let’s take back control on the issuance of money and not just on a national level”. Yeah, let’s. How can we do that? Well, economics expert that is KOK, he instructs that “Every country should be issuing its own currency”. Most of the countries of the world actually do that already, Ken! But there has to be a twist on it, right? “In that way we can free ourselves of the banking debt.” Got it? All clear right?

Not really. So, how can we get more details on how to do Just That One Thing? We go to seek other videos by Ken, such as “Ken O’Keefe explains why Hitler was right”. There are loads of versions of this talk he gave, many of them with newsreel footage of starving Germans and Hitler basking in the glory of the Germans he saved from starvation. Ken doesn’t waste time pandering to the Reptilians Control the World set, he goes straight for the real target, the Jews. More specifically, “Jewish Bankers”. According to Ken, “the major crime of Hilter was to get Germany out of a banking debt. He had the nerve to say ‘Fuck Off’ to the bankers.” According to Ken, Hitler “brought that nation back to a powerhouse within several years just by using their own (sic) money supply.”

Now, one doesn’t have to be either an economist or a historian to realise the enormous idiocy of the claims of O’Keefe. First of all, Hitler’s economic policy was not about abundant distribution of money to all for world class everything. His was a war economy based on the idea of the supremacy of a command economy. The wealth was not about fair distribution or creation of wealth, but it was obtained via expropriation and the looting of German Jewish wealth. It was based on forced labour, not only of the conquered people, but also of the domestic population. Ken can call history “Bullshit! Bullshit!” but his ignorance of how that economy actually worked and the immense human exploitation and suffering surrounding it is clear. Just as his idea that the moeny was “their own”. When Hitler occupied the various countries, he robbed them of their gold reserves and also had access to (mainly) private capital. When Hitler commandeered the Reichsbank, his dummy currency expansion was able to fraudulently strengthen the Reichsbank. That this could be in any way praised as a model staggers the imagination.

When Ken says something about interest-free money, well, of course the printing of money or creation of money independent of any reserve or economic situation isn’t weighted down with interest. It will affect only inflation (which is limitless, as Zimbabwe’s 79.6 billion percent inflation in 2008 teaches us), which can be a far greater problem than interest charged on money being loaned. Ken seems to lose stock (if he ever had it) of the theoretical aspect of money as a unit of account, store of value and medium of exchange. The printing of dummy money is yet another pyramid scheme, but with a bigger picture, ill-defined, but all the same, THAT ONE THING! And, for all those countries (most of them) that have their own currency? Why is everything so bad and so unfair?

If we follow Ken’s logic, it seems that the (final) solution to all the world’s problems involves a lot of unethical, inhuman and historically failed scenarios. We’ll pass on this one.

By: Abdulrahman Hetteh (Specialist in the Field of International Law and Human Rights)

On Wednesday November 8 2017, Ahmad Mola Nissi, one of the founders of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Al-Ahwaz, was shot dead by a masked gunman in front of his house in The Hague, Netherlands. Despite the arrival of emergency services to the location providing CPR and medical attention, Mola died on scene from multiple injuries to his chest and head.

Mola’s family told the media that he had been threatened with death on multiple occasions by the Iranian regime in order prevent him from speaking up for the forgotten people of the occupied Al-Ahwaz region in Iran. Mola, 54, fled Iran with his wife and five children in 2005 due to incessant regime death threats. Despite exile, Mola continued his political activities, and as such, the regime finally decided to assassinate him.

The physical elimination of political dissidents is a tactic carried out by Iranian regime in order to terrorise activists having support and followers among the minority peoples in Iran. It could be argued that the political assassinations of freedom fighters by the regime are carried out, not only to directly harm the activists and their families, but also to instill fear-based control among non-Persian peoples who oppose the regime’s brutal reign.

New agencies The Independent and Reuters have both reported that “Ahwazi Arabs are a minority in mainly ethnic Persian Iran, and some see themselves as under Persian occupation and want independence or autonomy. They say they are deprived of decent living standards and civil rights.” Yousef Azizi Benitorof, an Ahwazi Arab activist, argued that the killing of Ahmad Mola is likely to have been carried out by forces affiliated with the Iranian Intelligence Service. Benitorof believes the fight against autocratic regimes has always been accompanied by such casualties.

It is worth noting that after the 1979 revolution, the Iranian Intelligence Service assassinated more than three hundred of its opponents in Europe. With the start of President Khatami’s era ruling Iran, such assassination missions almost ended. However, the killing of Ahwazi Arab activists has continued to this day.

Inside the occupied Ahwazi region, Arab poets and activists are often killed by poisoning and other suspicious methods. The Iranian regime kills Ahwazi activists abroad in a similar fashion, however, now more direct assassination methods have become more common. Benitorof noted that due to the important geopolitical position of Al-Ahwaz, the Ahwazi National Movement has become increasingly worrisome to the dominance of the Iranian state.

The Azerbaijan National Resistance Organization (ANRO) condemned the assassination of Ahwazi leader Ahmad Mola, and stated that “assassination has long been a standard method of the Iranian regime to silence dissent, especially when dissidents or opposition figures demand political transparency, free speech or human rights for deprived minorities.”

Ahwazi civil and political activists are urging authorities in the Netherlands to make public their latest findings related to the assassination. They are also asking that further protection be provided for Ahwazis in Europe and elsewhere due to this event. It’s imperative that the international community and international human rights organizations take tangible measures to stop any future killings of Ahwazi dissidents by Iranian forces.

Rate this:

One of the celebratory posters of the Syrian General plastered in various Italian cities. It bears almost all the signs of the Fascist and Neo-fascist propaganda, (use of this stylised alphabet, the declaration of HONOR!) Interestingly enough also the Italian far left celebrates the same “hero”.

WRITTEN BY RICCARDO CRISTIANO, translated by Mary Rizzo

(Translator’s note: CasaPound is an Italian political movement that is proudly “far right”. It is the first “centro sociale” (youth and student movement starting in the 90s that is primarily far left) that considers its inspiration Fascist. Like many far-right movements in Europe, it maintains a very active base, which often makes up for its lack of “official” political recognition, though it currently participates in elections with its own candidates and in coalitions with other right-wing parties. Though the militants of CasaPound are renowned for their frequent episodes of violence and xenophobia, they also are very active in ideological recruitment in campaigns that are nationalistic, at times having a social character, such as proposals for interest-free public housing, and together with groups such as the European Front for Syria, are involved in the dissemination on the street level (literally) of international issues with propaganda for the regime in Syria in particular, because, in their own words: “For Six years Assad has been the best defence of Europe against terrorism”.)

Sunday morning. The British press reported that Sahar Dofdaa, who was only one month old, had died in Damascus. She starved to death. She was born in the village of Hamuriya in al-Ghouta, an area that has been besieged for years by troops loyal to the government of Damascus and controlled by a fundamentalist group, the Jaysh al-Islam, which keeps a tight hold on the town’s inhabitants. It is the same area where Assad’s army, in 2013, used chemical weapons to massacre civilians, even if the UN has been unable to officially declare the culprit, because since 2012, the UN peacekeeping troops have been removed from Syria. The British newspaper The Guardian has published the statements of Dr. Yahya Abu Yahya, who speaks about a great number of cases of severe childhood malnutrition such as that of Sahar, born from a mother who did not have the strength to nourish her child, citing seventy infants who are dying of starvation and four thousand children who suffer from nutritional deficiencies. And the sample from which he refers is limited to just nine thousand children.

If not even this fact can shake us, it is probably because the propaganda machine has convinced us that in al-Ghouta, just as in other areas controlled by fierce jihadists, everyone is a terrorist, even children who have lived just one month of life. Instead, this is in all probability precisely the dramatic outcome pursued with ferocity by the regime since 2001. This is also the case with Idlib.

Tuesday morning. Although in Italy very little media time has been dedicated to it, there is an interesting piece of news from the International press: Russia has vetoed the resolution that would allow prosecution of the investigation in regard to the chemical weapons massacres in Syria, the Joint Investigative Mechanism, whose mandate expires in November. A report was scheduled to appear by the end of October concerning the massacres perpetrated this summer at Khan Shaykhun near Idlib by means of chemical weapons. In this massacre, just as in the Ghouta massacre with chemical weapons, many children were killed. Russia sought to discuss the report on the Khan Shaykhun massacre before renewing its mandate.

Wednesday morning. It should be mentioned that one hundred Italian cities have woken up discovering that Casa Pound and the European Front for Syria have plastered walls and monuments with slogans written to celebrate one of the most notorious Syrian army commanders, Issam Zahreddine, a war criminal responsible for crimes against humanity, recently killed in combat in Syria, supposedly struck by a landmine planted by ISIS. This General of the Syrian Republican Guard, has been placed in the “short list” of individuals that are subject to special and personal sanctions on behalf of the European Union, with the accusation that he was the organiser of the chemical attack on Khan Shaykhoun.

The General had become famous for a photograph that portrays him standing close to hanged bodies that had clearly been tortured prior to their execution, as well as a film that shows him walking in front of a row of corpses so long that he cuts his walk short before even finishing the entire review. According to family members of Marie Colvin, the journalist that was assassinated in Syria, he ordered the artillery attack that killed her when he learned where the famous reporter was staying. Among his last public actions, an interview released just a few weeks ago. Turning to the millions of Syrian refugees who fled abroad after losing everything, Issam Zahreddine said, “If you know what’s good for you, you will never again set foot in Syria.” It’s important to know that in addition to the far right who signed the banners, among the environments that sympathise with him are also groups of the radical left.

In the midst of the Syrian genocide, it’s always interesting when you manage to be amused by the antics of the enemy. If you thought that the Pro-Assad faction was united, you haven’t been paying close enough attention. The fact is that there is a civil war going on between the Old Guard and the New Guard. Both factions claim to be intimate with “the President” and privy to special, secretive knowledge. Yes, we know, Knowledge is Power. Both factions also are waging their own little cyber war based on calling each other spies, Mossad agents and cyber stalkers. There is so much importance given to the claim about being “invited” to countries such as North Korea and Syria by the leadership, with the other side shooting their bullets in the “DID NOT!” stakes, and bragging to have “informed” authorities about the lies and liars.

It’s a sight to savour, and you can enjoy the two pages on Facebook created for the purposes of “exposing” the Fake Experts” here and here. There are so many “proofs” that they provide that the currently popular western “Experts” such as Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett, Tim Anderson and others who have been proclaiming their devotion to “the President” are actually Zionists and spies. That they are fake, we all can see that, but the spin given by their own allies is a joy to behold.

Let’s just point out two screenshots published (in Facebook and on Twitter) by Navastev, aka Scott Gaulke, of a chat between himself and Vanessa Beeley. Please read the content carefully. Here is an admission by today’s biggest regime pimp that Assad and the Govt were quite aware of the use of torture. And, naturally that torture is “irrelevant to the bigger picture”…

Does the rage that surrounds her declaration that Assad and the Govt knew of their torture signal a shift in position and is this disowning of Beeley a sign that she instead has joined the opposition? In fact, can claims like this let us suppose that Beeley suddenly takes on a position totally different from the established narrative that “the stories of torture are FAKE” by claiming that she is aware it is a well-known fact that the “govt” tortures?

What is probably happening is a display of bragging and loyalty that got out of hand. She is obviously (as is everyone) aware that torture is systematically used by the regime. The evidence for it is so monumental that denying it would qualify someone as being psychologically disturbed, having a completely false perception of reality and a recourse to denial to support a worldview that is shattered by the evidence. What she probably hoped to do was to score points that depict her as very intimate with Assad. She wants to show that Assad confides in her, that she is aware of private information and of course, her work will follow the course set out by Assad. Ok… she’s a fangirl bragging. But what she THINKS she is communicating is that Assad knows about every leaf that moves in his country. The great man AND HIS GOVERNMENT is fully aware of “a few bad apples”. This is a mutation of the mantra of the Syrian regime supporters in the early days of the uprising when they repeated, endlessly, “We admit there is corruption in Syria, the President is aware of it and he is seeking to make reforms, but the foreign-backed protesters are instead turning some acceptable criticisms into regime change. We will not have that! We must support the President now!”

Beeley’s just showing her immense loyalty to the regime and the display of her acknowledgment of the perfection of Assad in another way, by an admission of HIS admission of torture. However, her frenemies are upset. She never should have put a crack into their gorgeous narrative. She was attacked by the husband and wife team of Iman and Susan Safi under their pseudonyms of Ghassan and Intibah Kadi on their various sites and pages. The following is the circling of Vanessa by them, labelling her as a spy while showing her in a meeting with Bouthaina Shaaban.

It seems that the Old Guard does not appreciate the New Guard getting all this attention, glory, money, fame, and so on from their promotion of the regime. At the same time, they are doing damage control of the actual incidents that could be extremely damaging for the regime, such as Christian Zionists like Janice Korkamp (seen in a photo next to Beeley) making multiple visits to regime-controlled Syria and promoting the regime in her blog. It’s hell on the image to have to deal with this! You can point out very bad connections and label them all as spies, or you can “contextualise” all of these fault lines, as Vanessa hopes she can do. However, the fact is clear that the admission of Assad’s knowledge of the regime’s torture does not bode well for the snow white image of the regime, particularly after years spent denying torture having ever taken place. The only way the Old Guard seems to be able to do it is to follow the Tankie Handbook step by step.

You see, Susan and Iman Safi think that it’s necessary for a person to have permission, an invitation and possibly even be sponsored or paid for by the various “governments”. They had “serious meetings with serious people” while THEY were in Russia and announce that Russia is far more free than Australia, their home. Here is a photo of those great days.

And yet, fellow Australian Tim Anderson (whom they call “academic with murky past”), along with Eva Bartlett and actress Carla Ortiz has made a trip to North Korea. That’s not really a problem, but it IS a problem that they might have gone there privately. You don’t do that, even if you ARE on a propaganda trip.

But, let’s get back to the crucial element here. When it comes to the REAL POWER in Syria, what matters is what reaches the ear of the right people in Syria, who of course will take the right “actions” against “spies”. They are bragging that they have “informed” the authorities about the visitors. We imagine so that “measures” can be taken against the “spies”. That always ends up VERY well, doesn’t it?

BY SAMANTHA FALCIATORI
The Syrian situation is hell on earth. To understand what is happening is our human duty, as well as being indispensable for the comprehension of those phenomena that cross over the natural confines of that land. For this reason, our Magazine will always follow the Syrian war as closely as we can; a war which is in fact many different and overlapping wars, so as to provide an always up-to-date picture that is as accurate as possible.

We have interviewed a volunteer of the Red Crescent, witness of the massacre of Al-Bayda and Banyas in May 2013 in which over 400 civilians were slaughtered, house by house, to then be buried in mass graves. His is a testimony that at 4 years from the massacre tells the story of one of the darkest and most bloody pages of the Syrian war.

What you are about to read is a unique testimony of one of the bloodiest pages of the Syrian war, the massacre that began on 2 May 2013 of the civilian population of two towns in the coastal area. The National Defence Force (NDF) and the Shabeeha, pro-government militias comprised of Shi’as and Alawites (the religious group to which the Assad family belongs), attacked the Sunni-majority towns of Al-Bayda and Banyas, nestled in the Alawite-majority zone between Tartous and Latakia, stronghold of the Syrian regime, with summary slaughtering the inhabitants (Sunni), breaking into their homes, setting them on fire, burning alive those who were inside, including infants.

The Banyas Local Council has identified a total of 410 victims, the Syrian Network for Human Rights has counted 459. The UN Investigation Commission on Syria has investigated this massacre, among many similar ones, identifying the perpetrators, ascertaining that there was no presence of armed opposition, nor were there any military clashes in the city during the massacre, and concluded in its report A / HRC / 24/46 (pages 32-33) that there was “reasonable evidence that the perpetrators were governmental forces”.

It is the Syrian regime itself that has confirmed the responsibilities of its militias carrying military operations on Al-Bayda and Banyas, broadcasting images of the carnage (as in this news report from al Manar) on the government-friendly TV channels, but always claiming that only terrorists had been killed. The images of women and children, including newborns, mutilated and burned alive, as well as the testimony of the survivors, tells another story.

We were able to interview an eyewitness of that massacre, already heard by Human Rights Watch investigators for their No One’s Left investigation. The man was in Banyas and was part of the team that the Syrian security forces sent after the massacre to arrange the corpses in the mass graves and clean up the streets. He accepted, asking for anonymity for security reasons, to tell Zeppelin what happened and what he saw, providing a rare and precious testimony also about the planning of the massacre (which had been in the planning for several months) and its political / religious motives. This is the transcript of the interview.

The massacre of Al-Bayda and Banyas can be understood in the wider project of ethnic cleansing of Syria, and it fits within the framework of the efforts of international justice to take the first steps toward punishing those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity, thanks also to those eyewitness accounts, like this one, that, though they are brutal, should be listened to.

Testimony of a volunteer of the Red Crescent from Banyas.

He witnessed the 2013 massacre and disposed of the bodies in a mass grave afterwards. He requested anonymity for security reasons. The interview was recorded over Skype on January 5, 2017.

Q: What can you tell me about that day? What happened and what did you see?

[..] The Syrian Red Crescent could enter the city only 3 days after the massacre, because the army prevented all the people from coming in or out of Banyas [..] Banyas is a coastal town between Tartous and Latakia, the two biggest cities in the coastal area; Banyas is a smaller town, of about 50,000 people. It was one of the first which took part in the revolution, when people took to the street for many reasons, regarding what was happening in Deraa, the lack of freedom, but also because there were tensions between the rural areas of Banyas, mainly Alawite, and the city, mainly Sunni, and they felt the injustice because all the employees, all those working in courts, hospitals, in the oil industry of Banyas are all Alawites, and people felt injustice and took to the street. This was a choke for the regime because it thought that a coastal city, where the coastal area was the stronghold of the regime, would not participate in any kind of demonstrations. So Banyas was a surprise for the regime, they hated it, because they saw people demanding the fall of the regime in the heart of its stronghold.

Q: And the demonstrations were in the Sunni part of the city or all over the city?

In the Sunni part. In Banyas you have the Sunni part which is the old city of 50-60 years ago. Then when the Alawites took power, they came from rural areas, so all the officers, State employees settled in Banyas and built new neighbourhoods, so Banyas was getting bigger and now it is in two parts: the southern part, which is Sunni, and the northern part, which is Alawite. Christians are living in between, in the two parts. The Christians who are originally from Banyas are living with the Sunnis because that is the old city, and the new Christians who came to Banyas from other towns are living in the new neighbourhoods, the Alawite ones [..]. The demonstrations were 100% in the Sunni part. Christians, for many reasons, did not take part in them. I did, but secretly, because the regime tried to prevent Christians and Alawites from participating in the demonstrations because it did not want them to look like a national thing whose demands came from everybody[1], so it tried to emphasize their Sunni trait.

Q: So there was dissent also among the Christian and Alawite community?

Yes, they tried to prevent them from getting in because when Alawites and Christians would come to the demonstrations it looked like it was not religious or radical [as the regime wanted to depict the demonstrations] but it would be a Syrian demonstration. But still, in the first 3 or 4 demonstrations, there were Alawite people coming from the Alawite neighbourhoods secretly who participated in the demonstrations. I have videos of this, many Alawite people came, they had speeches, they were welcome and people were crazy about them because they were Alawites supporting their demands, it was great. But after that, in May 2011 the Syrian army surrounded the city, they cut electricity in the Sunni part, they cut food [deliveries] preventing it from coming in, the siege lasted for 2-3 weeks, and after that they rolled the tanks and got into the city. They took a lot of prisoners, they were tortured in the Banyas stadium, where they took the people, 10,000 maybe, tortured them and humiliated them[2]. People were taken to the military prison in Tartous, Damascus and Homs, some people were never returned. We think they were killed under torture. After this, when the army came back to the town, patrolling the city, there were a couple of people trying to make very small demonstrations, like putting some homemade bombs where government forces were coming or going, but nothing as serious as it was happening in other parts of Syria[3], I think just 2 or 3 soldiers died in all these actions. This was still 2011, early part of 2012, then in Banyas everything was back to [normal] [..].

Suddenly, in early 2013 [..] all the Alawites involved in the militias of the regime, some were my friends […] they started to say that the people of Banyas were planning for something big. I said: “What are they planning for? Come on, the demonstrations have stopped, nothing is happening anymore”, so this kind of propaganda became to spread among the Alawites […]. There is a militia, the National Defence Forces (NDF), they are mainly civilians, 100% Alawites, and they are very tough, with a very strict point of view with the regime, they want all opposition dead, they started getting arms from the government and to participate in the battles all around Syria. One of them was called Ali Shaddoud, he is very famous in Banyas, he is a pharmacist. He is the founder of the NDF in Banyas and he told me personally that something big is happening in Banyas. Frankly I did not believe him.

Q: Because the opposition was not strong in Banyas?

Yes, because in 2013 it was defeated. The government was in full control of the city, so “what will happen? Nothing”. But he told me “something very big is happening”. When I tried to understand from some friends of his, some told me that the regime was trying to focus on Damascus and the coastal area and it did not want anything to happen there, so if there are Sunnis remaining in this area they wanted them to have a lesson, so they cannot oppose the regime anymore […] Then there was no intervention by Hezbollah, Iranians or Russians, so the regime was afraid that it could not control all Syria, so it was trying to preserve Damascus and the coastal areas.

Q: They did not target the political or military opposition: they targeted the Sunnis.

Of course. From the Alawite point of view when they say “opposition” they do not mean the political meaning of the word, they cannot say “Sunni” in the street because that would be rude and sectarian, but by “opposition” they mean “the Sunnis”. And when they said “we want them to have a lesson”, they meant the Sunnis. This was clear since the early months of 2013. But it was not before the early days of May 2013 that… it happened very fast, we started to see tanks coming to the town, and it was not 100% weird, Syria was at war […] we thought maybe they are moving troops and vehicles, ok. But then they put tanks and mortars on the hill of Banyas, in the Alawite part of the town, the hill that overlooks the city. We started to see people that were not from the town, they were wearing regime uniforms but they did not sound like they came from Banays. Some people who saw them, including my brother, saw Lebanese people having dinner in a restaurant in the Alawite part of Banyas, this restaurant is famous because the NDF gather there. They were clearly Lebanese, so Hezbollah or close to Hezbollah, I do not know, and they were talking about a big operation that was coming to Banyas. There was this guy, Kayalli, the commander of a militia, he comes from Turkey, from the Alawite minority in Turkey, they are fighting for the regime and this Kayalli lived in Latakia, where he went on TV and said, literally, “Banyas is the only weak point for the government in the coastal area and we will put an end to this, the traitors can come in the coastal areas through Banyas and we need to end it”, he said this 2 or 3 days before the massacre[4].

The Alawite General Ali al Kayalli, better known as Mihrac Ural (he is of Turkish origin, but has Syrian nationality) is the head of a pro-government militia, composed of Alawites and Shabeeha, called Syrian Resistance, based in al Baseet, North of Latakia. He was among those responsible for the massacre of Banyas. In this photo, he is in the centre, with flowers in his hand, together with his men. Credits to: sbs.com.au.

On the day of the massacre I was in the church because it was the Thursday before Easter[5] and suddenly […] we heard gunshots, we went out and saw the army and militia telling people to go home, so we went home. In the evening, we started to see… not from my home, but I went to the Alawite part, I saw 200-300 men coming from the highway, they were walking on the bridge that comes down to Banyas, some of them wearing masks on their faces, and also Alawite people, some of them were my friends, started to join them and I asked them “what are you going for with your guns?” They said “there is an operation in Banyas and al Baida”, al Baida is south of Banyas and it was famous in the first months of the revolution because it was actively participating in it […] so they began with al Baida, which is Sunni. Families of Banyas are living in al Baida and vice versa, so they are very close to each other. They started in al Baida and I was on the phone with a friend, and he was shaking, he was very afraid. I was surprised and asked “what is happening?”, because we thought they were going to take some men to prison, or beat and humiliate them as they did every day everywhere, but he told me “no, it is not beating nor humiliating, they are killing people”. And I was like “What? Killing people? Why?” and he said “Yes, they are killing people.” He told me that his mother’s family were burnt alive, some people were killed by gunshots, some were burnt, they gathered people in a shop and burnt them, like 60 or 70 dead bodies there, and people started to flee the city. So this is what they [regime people] wanted. It was May 2nd.

On May 3rd […] they came to Banyas and made a massacre […] in the heart of the Sunni part of the city. My home is very close to this so I went on the roof and I saw clearly the tanks bombing the city, I was able to see clearly the shells coming over my house, I saw them with the naked eye, and dropping down in the middle of the town. Then again these masked men came and did these atrocities. I did not see it, but many people told us, they started to kill people with swords, axes, guns, by burning, and I know families by name. They came and killed whole families…for example the Tahafamily had 17 people killed, they killed father, mother, sons, the son’s wives and sons and so on.

Q: So was it a deliberate ethnic cleansing of the Sunni population of the city?

Of course, because they targeted [Sunni] families, like the Taha family, the Shighri, even when they see “Shighri” on your ID card the government forces would be upset because they see that you are 100% from Banyas, so 100% opposition, so 100% Sunni. So they did ethnic cleansing of [Sunni] families. People started to flee, to Latakia. Also my family wanted to go there and they were accepted. I did not go there but my sister did and at the entrances of Latakia there were regime checkpoint and they were screening people from Banyas, if they knew they were Sunnis they sent them back, if they were Alawites or Christians they let them in. This lasted until May 4th, when they moved to another Sunni village […] called al Basateen, where they did not do ethnic cleansing but they took 95-96 men to prison and we have not heard of them since. So we assume they were also killed under torture. After the killing was over, it was a real shock to see even the Alawites who are 100% with the regime, being shocked and upset. A friend of mine, she was working in my same company, told me that her brother, an Alawite who supports the government, was part of these NDF and went to Al-Bayda to participate in what he thought was a regular operation of the regime, and he was shocked by the amount of atrocities done, the amount of killings, burning bodies, killing children, he fainted and they had to take him to hospital. He could not eat for two days, he was in shock, even people who are very radical with pro Assad [positions] were in shock, it was completely unprecedented, unexpected. After that they began to steal, they took a lot of cars, family homes’ furniture, we could see them putting them on army trucks. After 2-3 weeks they let people go back to Banyas, but not to Al-Bayda. Al-Baida is still empty to this day.

Q: But they didn’t let the Sunnis come back, or also the Sunnis?

Also the Sunnis. But of course after this a lot of, and by “a lot” I mean A LOT, of Sunni families in Banyas left. As my Alawite friend said, it was a lesson. So many families went to Turkey, and from there they came as refugees in Europe. […] Now in the Sunni part of the city you can only see old men, children and Sunni people coming from other towns, like Aleppo, these are the pro-regime Sunnis of Aleppo so the regime lets them stay in Banyas.

Q: When could you enter the targeted neighbourhoods as a Red Crescent volunteer?

We entered on May 7th, 8th and 9th for three consecutive days to bury the bodies, because they were in the street. I didn’t go to al Baida, because other teams were going there. Some members of the Red Crescent managed to smuggle out some photos of the dead bodies and these are the only photos we have of this massacre. They put us in a lot of trouble because they did not expect members of the Red Crescent, which is controlled by the regime, to smuggle photos out. These are the only photos because no media was allowed to go in and I know the people who took the photos and smuggled them out.

Q: There is a lot of disinformation about the photos because they don’t have a source, being smuggled out secretly. So some people say they are Christians killed by Daesh [ISIS] or Palestinians killed by the Israelis, or whatever, so…

Look, the regime is not stupid. It is evilly smart. It tried to confuse us, its supporters put together some photos of Banyas, Palestine, Iraq and said “look, this is not Banyas!” but I can know exactly which photos were taken by us and I can tell you where they were taken, I can pinpoint them on Google Maps, and some of the photos are taken in such known streets that people know it is Banyas. These photos are taken by members of the Red Crescent. [..] I have an Alawite friend, he is the one who took the photos of the children. So let’s see the photos[6].

The first one with children with a yellow shirt, another one with jeans, this is in Banyas. And this [scene of the] photo, I saw it personally, with the naked eye. I can assure you 100% that I saw this horrific scene. The second one, the two babies, I did not see this personally but it is in Banyas, and also the other one. The fourth one is in Al-Bayda, I know this street, it is not Banyas, it is Al-Bayda. The other one, with the blood, the boy and the men, also this is in Al-Bayda and I know the guy, the family of the guy. The photo with the woman and the children, this is also in Banyas, in a neighbourhood called Ras Al-Nabe’. The last photos, with another woman and children, which is by the way the same as above, this is Banyas, and I know these stairs, everybody in Banyas knows them, this small street is in Banyas, in Ras al-Nabaa. The regime ordered us to open mass graves and put people in them. We were not able to put all the families in the mass grave together, respectfully. I will not forget where it is. We put a lot of bodies in it, I think 40-50 bodies and I heard from my friends that there are also mass graves in al Baida. We managed to bury all the bodies. […] We know from the Local Councils in al Baida and Banyas that there were 300 killed in al Baida and over 100 in Banyas. So totally 410. Half of them, more or less, women and children.

Q: I wonder something: after the massacre the regime blamed terrorists…

Actually no [..] they said the government attacked Banyas because there were terrorists hiding weapons there.

Q: But how can they justify the fact that in al Baida and Banyas many women and children died because of the massacre? How could they all be “terrorists”?

I know what you mean, but if you think that the people who support the regime try to find excuses, maybe you are wrong. From my friends, my colleagues, at work, at university… more than 75% of the people who are pro-regime, like Alawites and some Christians, they do not need excuses. Actually I hear some neo-fascist-nazi things, like “kill them, they are insects, they are animals, let them be taken out”. Of course some of them say “Yeah, killing children is not ok, but this is all their parents’ fault, they want the Islamic State, they want to kill minorities, so they had the right punishment”. You can hear this [being said] without any shame, so people do not need excuses, they know, they knew that the regime killed them, but they try to defend it, they try to convince themselves that they are terrorists, and maybe a couple of mistakes have been done, but they are living well with this. You cannot imagine how much hatred there is. Mainly the minorities feel like this, really, they are like Nazis, I’m sorry to say it but…of course some of the minorities are with the revolution, they stand bravely, but I’m talking about the mainstream.

Q: Many people say that before the revolution the Syrians lived together peacefully…

No, this is a big lie, we lived in a lie. We had a secretive regime that controlled every aspect of life and society […] In my classroom, we were like 20-25 guys, and 10-11 of us did not have the father because they were imprisoned and were never seen again. People tried to forget what happened in the 80’s, the horrible Hama massacre, but the hatred is real. […] The Alawites took all the positions in the coastal areas, all State employees are Alawites and many young Sunni were forced to go abroad to work.

Q: One last question: when I was reading the Human Rights Watch report…

Q: So maybe you remember that it says that the regime started the operation in al Baida because a man confessed there were deserters. What do you think about it?

No, I think that’s irrelevant. Banyas took part actively in the demonstrations, we hid some deserters, there was an assassination operation against a regime officer, all this happened. But I know it was deliberately planned months before, you cannot make such an operation in a city where there is no violent engagement like in Homs, Aleppo, Damascus or the rural areas. You cannot kill 400 people just to get a few deserters, the amount of forces that came to Banyas but are not from Banyas, all the talking to my Alawite friends about a lesson [to give] to the Sunnis in the coastal areas, I think it was well planned.

[…] The regime didn’t even bother to emphasise this confession as a pretext, it said “it was an operation, maybe some mistakes were done, but the rest is propaganda against us”. Since the early days there was a lot of talking about tanks, Lebanese and militia men coming to town having conversations, it was all obvious. But we were shocked by the size of it, it was huge to kill 400 in two days! […]

I think it was a deliberate ethnic cleansing. It was not part of the daily activities of the war […] We have not seen this elsewhere, in Latakia I saw a shooting on a demonstration that killed 30 people, but still that was “regular activity”. But this and the Ghouta attack are beyond the clashes between regime and opposition. It was ethnic cleansing, also in Ghouta they were 100% Sunnis and in Banyas no Alawite or Christian was injured, not killed, not even injured. [..] My friend, who took the photos of the massacre, is still having nightmares to this day, after more than three years […] Those two days changed everything, I had friends and family who are with the regime, two of my cousins tried to defend the massacre and we are not talking anymore since the massacre. So divisions are also in the families, imagine in the society. They say there were terrorists, but in that area there was not jihadist or ISIS presence, it was a stronghold of the regime […]. I remember one thing, I was talking with a guy whose uncle was a prominent Alawite officer who worked for Hafez al Assad, Ali Douba, he was very famous because he was the head of the Military Intelligence Services, and this guy told me once: “Do you know why they chose Banyas?” and I said “No, why?”. “Because they could not do it in Latakia or Tartous because they are big cities and by doing it there they would risk to paralyse the city, so they decided to punish Banyas because it is small and even if life stopped in Banyas, that would not have affected the economy”. […]

Q: Ok, thanks a lot for your time and testimony [..].

Thank you. I don’t want this story to die, I want people to know. It’s very important what you and others are doing.

[3]For an overview of the story of Banyas from the early demonstrations to the massacre and the development of local councils and brigades, see S. DARWISH, M. DIBO, Cities in Revolution. Baniyas. Al-Bayda: The White City, 24/05/2011.

Zafer Mohammed al-Ajmi: The best defense is a good offense; move the battle inside Iran

Fatima Abdullah Khalil: Liberating Ahwaz will be a severe blow to Iran

Ayoub Said: The occupation benefited from both internal and external factors

Ismail Khalafullah: We have six solutions to the Ahwazi situation, including a popular revolution

Hassan Radhi: The occupation is trying to obliterate the identity of the people of Ahwaz

————-

The Arab European Foundation for International Relations (EISO) on Saturday held a symposium entitled “The Implications of the Arab-Iranian Conflict on the Ahwazi Issue” on August 26, in light of the Arab-Persian conflict.

The seminar included several sessions that began with a morning session on “the Arab-Iranian conflict in light of the transformations of the Middle East”, followed by the first lecture by Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim and Dr. Barbara Ibrahim, on “Methods of Conflict Management in the Middle East.”

In the second lecture, Fatima Khalil spoke about the “nature of the Arab-Iranian conflict: the geopolitical axis of the conflict.” The third lecture, in which Dr. Zafer al-Ajmi spoke, broached on “the role of the Ahwazi question in the Arab-Iranian conflict.” In the evening, the symposium was divided into three lectures. The first, entitled “The Right to Self-Determination, was given by Dr. Ismael Khalafallah. And the second lecture by Ayoub Said entitled “Occupying the Ahwaz: Reassessment of the Status quo” and the third lecture Presented by Hassan Radhi and focused on the policies of the center towards the people of Ahwaz over the past two decades.”

—————–

Hamid Mansour, the member of the Executive Committee of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz, has given the opening speech of the symposium, where he proclaimed the launch of the Arab-European Foundation for International Relations “AEFIR. It will be of significant role in media, politics, and culture. A host of Ahwazi youth who is interested in the Ahwazi plight witnessed AEFIR’s launch. In his speech, he pointed to the weak Arab influence in the Western society, which has the upper hand in the world today, noting that this allowed the opponents to be alone in the arena of influential work. They managed to create a distorted stereotype in the minds of Western public opinion due to their strong political and media presence, to be the sole basis for interpreting the reality of the political conflict in the Arab region, which in the end results in shaping an unfair Western opinion of the just Arab causes. He stressed the important role played by NGOs and public relations centers in rectifying the way through which civil and official institutions in the West look on just Arab causes, as well as building inter-relations and developing them among peoples to achieve common interests. Mansur pointed out that the AEFIR will pay great attention to filling the vacuum and building relations in order to mobilize for international cooperation on the Ahwazi question and the other just Arab causes. He called for developing and renewing the discourse, especially that the contemporary world does not tackle such issues in terms of values of justice and ideals. Interest is the foremost criterion. For it, armies are mobilized, positions are adopted, and leaders are unseated. He indicated that the most important objective of the institution is to correct the image of Arabs without begging. He pointed out that Arab issues are indivisible, and the Ahwazi plight is an integral part thereof. He stressed that the Arab interest necessitates broadening the scope of the issue’s perspective in order to make it stronger by avoiding partial solutions that only emphasize weakness and powerlessness. He said that the foundation seeks to present the Ahwazi issue as a just Arab and humanitarian cause. It seeks to manifest its national dimension, not only the political and historical aspects. AEFIR yet plans to render clear the strategic importance of the Ahwazi plight for the other Arab questions. Also, the newborn Foundation aims to explain to the whole world how settling the Ahwazi issue will be of significant importance for stability in the region and enhancing global peace and security. According to the lecturers, the foundation shall reiterate that ditching the Ahwazi cause will show the world how Arabs are ready to concede their rights.

Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, director of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies, in his lecture entitled “Methods of Conflict Management in the Middle East” said that the Iran is a challenge to the Arab region. He indicated that it is not a threat. According to him, a threat is a thing that comes from outside such as Israel. The Iranian threat is part of the region. He noted that Iran acted as the policeman of the Gulf since its last monarch Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, with the blessing of the US. He pointed out Jimmy Carter said from Tehran that Washington welcomes Iran’s role as a policeman to maintain the security of the Gulf.

He considered that justice as a value is one of the main demands of all peoples of the world, stressing that the demands of the people of Ahwaz are an integral part of all the demands and slogans that united the whole world, such as values of freedom and democracy. He explained that Ahwaz had been isolated from its Arab sphere and given to the shah in return for an agreement that would enable Britain to search for oil on the eastern shore of the Gulf. This was part of the Sykes-Picot agreement and others. He said that this ambition could be stopped by awareness, coordination, and solidarity among all local factions to face up to the expansionist Persian hegemony. He argued that this expansionist desire will not be halted by changing the regime there, history tells us so. It is a deep-rooted orientation in the Persian mindset. He noted that the absence of the Egyptian role over the past two decades enabled Iran to spill over its influence into at least five Arab countries. It began to exploit the rampant poverty in some African countries to infiltrate the east coast of Africa in an attempt to besiege the Kingdom (of Saudi Arabia) and Egypt. He pointed out that the Persians are the inventors of chess, a game through which you can defeat your rival using his papers, and this is what is happening now that the Iran exploits any popular base in the Arab countries as a launch pad for spillover. He pointed out that Iran has started to play on the heartstrings of those who have a love for Ahlul Bait, Prophet Mohammed’s family. This issue attracts many sympathizers in Egypt. For those people, Iran offers money and other forms of aid. It helps them build their institutions. These establishments promote Shiism in its essence. Ibrahim called for the need to cooperate to create rational public awareness without hostility or hatred against anyone, including the Iranians themselves, as the Persians Iranians make up only 40%, of the Iranian people and the rest are groups of different ethnicities, pointing out that the Persians are the strongest group and they managed to prevail over the rest of the people. Yet he called on all those marginalized in Iran to stick to solidarity, stressing that Ahwazis are entitled to spread brotherhood and solidarity with all oppressed groups on the basis of equality and justice for all, and cooperate with all liberal groups in the region, to seek to acquire an observer status at the Arab League and United Nations.

——————–

Dr. Dhafer Mohammed Al Ajmi, Executive Director of Gulf Watch Group, in his lecture entitled “Positions of Gulf States on Ahwaz: Reality and Hope”, pointed out that the international relations are administered by two types of personalities, either a diplomat or a soldier. He sees that ambiguous positions are over in the Gulf. “Saudi Arabia stands firmly in the face of Iran’s expansionism,” said Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “Saudi Arabia is well aware of the fact that it is a target of the Iranian regime, and that the Kingdom will not wait until the battle rages on the Saudi soil, but it will work to move the battle inside Iran ” He stressed that the solution to the Iranian meddling in the Gulf countries is to shift the theater of the battle into the Arabian territories of Ahwaz, stressing that working in this spot shall be very painful for Iran. He cited a statement of former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, where he said: “Iran lives by Khuzestan.” He concluded by calling for the unification of speech and efforts for the Ahwazis to obtain their right to self-determination.

Fatima Abdullah Khalil, a writer and researcher on the Arabian Gulf’s affairs, in her lecture entitled “Iranian expansion from Ahwaz to Yemen”, concluded GCC states should be the Launchpad for resisting the Iranian schemes since they are more stable, richer and more independent compared to neighboring Arab countries. She pointed out that the GCC countries began recently to try to bring back the Arab Shiites to the Arab and Gulf sphere, through the Saudi-Iraqi rapprochement. She pointed to the need to promote Yemeni containment from within through integrating the Yemeni people into the Gulf, and supporting groups opposed to Iran, particularly Ahwazis. Yet she stressed that retaking Ahwaz is an Arab national necessity, and a geostrategic necessity, which will pave the way for Ahwaz to be independent and join the GCC. The lecturer noted that clawing back Ahwaz will be a deadly blow to Iran.

In a lecture entitled “The occupation of Ahwaz, reassessment of the status quo, Ayoub Said, writer and researcher on Ahwaz, addressed the era relating to the annexation of Al-Ahwaz in 1925 and the subsequent obliterating of its historical sovereignty in light of interlocked regional and international conditions that pushed in this direction.

He also focused on the internal factors that combined with the external factors, which led to losing control over Ahwaz. Foremost of these factors was the lack of incubators for the policies of Prince Khazal, which indifference and somewhat satisfaction at the overthrow of the Prince and the occupation of Ahwaz.

Dr. Ismail Khalafallah, a lawyer and researcher on international law and director of the Association of Rights and Freedoms in France, discussed the Ahwazi issue in a lecture entitled “The right of the Arab people of Ahwaz to determine their own destiny and the legitimacy of their resistance” In several points as follows:

1 – What was taken by force, can only be restored by force which requires a sweeping and comprehensive revolution against the Iranian occupiers.

2 – Unifying and gathering all the political and military forces of Ahwazi in one front inclusive of all the factions, to end the Iranian occupation of Ahwaz.

3 – Raise the awareness of Arab people Ahwaz concerning the need to muster within a unified body organized politically, militarily, socially and culturally, to counter Iranian colonialism.

4 – Intensifying efforts aimed at raising awareness within the Arab and Islamic society and the international community, that this issue is part of the decolonization efforts and asserting that the Arab region of Ahwaz is a pure Arab land that was seized by the Iranian colonizer in complicity with the US.

5 – Promoting the idea of the right of the Arab people of Ahwaz to gain independence from Iran at national, regional and international levels.

6 – Working to remove all political and intellectual differences between all factions of the Arab people Ahwaz both at home and abroad.

In a lecture titled ‘policies of the center towards the Ahwazi people’ over the past two decades, Hassan Radhi, director of the Ahwaz Center for Media and Strategic Studies, focused on woes experienced by the Ahwazis under the occupation in the social, economic and political aspects in light of the repressive policies aimed at wiping out the identity of the Ahwazi people.

The unity required to oust the current brutal theocratic regime in Tehran and to replace it with a modern, genuinely democratic, forward-looking system can only come from finally abandoning the regressive supremacist thinking which shapes this regime’s totalitarian mindset as it did the mindset of its predecessors. The PMOI has struggled for radical change in Iran for over half a century; as Ahwazi activists and supporters of justice for all peoples, we urge the party to acknowledge the failure of the current, outmoded, brutally enforced nation-state model which has failed for many decades to recognize all citizens’ rights to autonomy, liberty, and equality.

Leaders and members of the Iranian opposition party, the People’s Mujahideen Organization (PMOI) also known as Mujahedin e-Khalq or MEK, have reacted angrily to criticism of the organization’s discriminatory policies towards Iranians of non-Persian ethnicity after some Arabs and Ahwazis condemned the organization’s policies towards already oppressed minorities in Iran, who make up over half the country’s population.

In a number of articles published in recent days on news websites and in statements on social media, PMOI representatives have referred to Ahwazi Arab activists and supporters of Ahwazi freedom – among the people most brutally oppressed and subjected to racist persecution by the Tehran regime – as being agents of the Tehran regime. One example of this is an article published on the Madaen website by PMOI member Ali Qaimi in which he accuses Ahwazi freedom activists of being regime agents, claiming that their objective is to slander the ‘genuine opposition’ to the regime. Such grotesque and defamatory accusations against Ahwazi activists were made without any evidence, since none exists, adding insult to injury for Ahwazi people already routinely persecuted by the regime for their Arab ethnicity.

While the Iranian regime routinely subjects Ahwazis and other ethnic minorities in Iran, including Kurds, Turkmen, and Baluchis, to brutal racist discrimination and persecution, in addition to its standard oppression and crushing of all dissent, the PMOI claims to oppose this systematic injustice and to represent the voice of freedom, justice and dignity for all citizens of Iran; unfortunately it fails to live up to this lofty aspiration, with some of its members instead repeating the same anti-Arab prejudice towards Ahwazis. This failure is causing many among the country’s Arab population to question the party’s commitment to replacing the current brutal regime with genuine representative democracy in which Ahwazis have equal rights and freedoms.

Many Ahwazis, already aggrieved and alienated by such inflammatory and insulting statements from the PMOI, are also frustrated that the party is routinely represented in media as being the sole opposition to the Iranian regime while other opposition groups which represent the country’s ethnic minorities, as well as those of Persian ethnicity and which are involved in far more extensive opposition activities, are disregarded. A number of Ahwazi parties, as well as others representing Kurds such as the PJAK, Turkish parties such as the Azerbaijan Independence Party, and Balochi parties such as the Baluchistan Party, which work tirelessly for freedom and human rights, at great risk to their members in Iran, to help people in their own areas and in coordination with one another, have been flatly ignored, both by the PMOI and by its international supporters.

So long as the PMOI continues to mirror the ethnic supremacism of the current regime and its predecessors towards minorities in Iran and to disregard their legitimate calls for autonomy and self-determination, it will continue to be viewed as simply replicating their policies of oppression; Ahwazis, Kurds and other minorities who rose up once before in 1979 to win freedom from earlier oppressors have no desire to once again go through such upheavals simply in order to again replace one more oppressive, unjust and racist regime with another.

Another example of the casual racism shown by the PMOI to Ahwazi Arabs in the aforementioned article by senior party member Qaimi was his insulting effort at cultural appropriation, dressing in traditional Ahwazi Arab garb – outlawed by the regime – for his byline photo in an effort to make himself “look Ahwazi” so that his offensive claims about Ahwazi activists might carry more weight; Ahwazi Arabs are routinely arrested for wearing their traditional Arab attire. Mr. Qaimi, a Persian Iranian, even described himself as a “writer of Ahwaz”, in an attempt to suggest that he is himself an Ahwazi Arab. This is akin to the famous white American woman Rachel Dolezal pretending to be African-American in order to pose as a black activist and to write from a first-person perspective about racism; at least in Dolezal’s case, however, she was not further insulting African-American civil rights activists by claiming that they were working in league with white supremacists; in Mr. Qaimi’s case, he used Ahwazi attire in support of an article slandering actual Ahwazi Arabs who are targeted by the regime for their ethnicity and cultural heritage.

This contemptible action by this writer and the grotesque slanders about Ahwazi activists contained in his article were crass, exploitative and wholly unethical and should be disowned by the PMOI if it wishes to restore its already battered credibility with the Ahwazi people.

Similarly to the egregious accusations made by Ali Qaimi, the head of the People’s Mujahedeen Organization, Dr. Snabrq Zahedi, issued a problematic statement addressing some aspects of suffering endured by ethnic minorities since the 1979 revolution. In his statement, he readily showed approval for Kurdish self-governance in Iran while ignoring Iranian regime atrocities committed against Arabs, such as the Black Wednesday Massacre in the Ahwazi city of Muhammarah. The PMOI has yet to publicly take a position on, let alone condemn, the horrors enacted upon Ahwazi Arabs by the Iranian regime. The PMOI has also taken no sure stance regarding the regime’s diversion of Ahwazi Rivers to Persian provinces that subsequently instigates demographic change when Arabs are forced to leave the depleted Ahwazi lands. The PMOI, like the regime, has also not addressed the April 15, 2005, Arab uprising in any real way, save in small mentions buried deep within their media releases.

Zahedi asserted in this speech, seemingly without any clear understanding of the Ahwazi issue, that “the project to establish self-governance in Kurdistan, Iran should be a general framework for all non-Persian peoples.” He was even praised for this statement by the National Council on Kurdistan in particular. So it is therefore pertinent to ask: What does it mean to say that the framework of the self-rule used for the Kurdistan Region in Iran could be applicable to all non-Persian regions and ethnic peoples? What is this framework and how does it apply to Arabs, Baluchs, Turks, Turkmen, and other ethnic minorities?

Is the objective of the Resistance Council, the political wing of the PMOI, to work on establishing a self-governing model for all peoples such as Arabs, Baluchs, Turks, Turkmen, and other ethnic minorities as was approved for the Kurds? If this is the intention, why has the PMOI not made any public announcement to that effect as of yet? Why has the PMOI not sought contributions to such initiatives towards other non-Persian peoples as they did with the Kurds? There is a saying that “doubt naturally comes before assurance” as based on the lengthy experiences of oppression and betrayal, the Ahwazi people cannot be assured of anything until concrete actions are taken to back up PMOI’s statements.

Previously, some members of the Ahwazi Party had attended a meeting with leaders from the People’s Mujahideen Organization. During said meeting, PMOI members stated bluntly that they will not accept autonomy for Ahwazi Arabs, as the circumstances of Kurdish autonomy are completely different. It would seem that the PMOI have taken a tolerant stance towards the Kurdish issue, perhaps in part to the preponderance of Kurdish people within their own forces during the Iran-Iraq war. This alliance seems to have facilitated a bridge for cooperation between the Kurds and PMOI. Another factor may be that the PMOI believes that Kurdish people belong to the Aryan race, which seems to have made it easier to accept their desire for autonomy above other ethnic minorities. Other than the aforementioned factors, there seem to be no other sensible reasons why the PMOI would support only Kurdish autonomy in Iran, which is still seen as “fragile and unreliable” according to Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou who was the iconic leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran until his assassination in 1989 by individuals suspected of being agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The unity required to oust the current brutal theocratic regime in Tehran and to replace it with a modern, genuinely democratic, forward-looking system can only come from finally abandoning the regressive supremacist thinking which shapes this regime’s totalitarian mindset as it did the mindset of its predecessors. The PMOI has struggled for radical change in Iran for over half a century; as Ahwazi activists and supporters of justice for all peoples, we urge the party to acknowledge the failure of the current, outmoded, brutally enforced nation-state model which has failed for many decades to recognize all citizens’ rights to autonomy, liberty, and equality. We are seeing the results of this systematically unjust and outmoded externally-imposed political model playing out tragically across the region as long-oppressed peoples, subjected for decades to injustice and oppression on the basis of sect, ethnicity, and faith, rise up for freedom and dignity, with assorted dictators and totalitarian regimes responding with further murderous oppression. The monstrous Iranian regime is central to efforts to ensure continuing tyranny regionally, as domestically. In order to succeed, the PMOI must incorporate the voices of all of the oppressed peoples in Iran, working as equals with Ahwazis and all other minorities to forge a new, mutually respectful political model, leaving the current, brutal and outmoded one in the dustbin of history where it belongs.

This heartbreaking footage shows an injured and despairing Ahwazi woman amid the rubble of the pitiful brick shed that was her and her five sons’ only home after security forces from Iran’s “resistance” regime demolished it, using the pretext that it was an illegal construction on state land unlicensed by the municipality. The blood running down her and her son’s faces comes from cuts inflicted by bricks from the home which were thrown at her by the regime personnel when they protested and attempted to stop the demolition and retrieve their meagre possessions.

The woman explains that she and her family once lived in a home in Abadan, also in the Ahwaz region, which was destroyed in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. When they subsequently fled to the regional capital, also named Ahwaz, she says, they lived as refugees in a tent in the shanty town where her one of her sons was bitten by a scorpion. Donations from other Ahwazi people enabled her and her sons to build the pitiful home on empty land in the same area – the home which has now been demolished by the Iranian regime.

Now, under the scorching summer sun in the hottest region of the world, in an area where daytime temperatures regularly rise to over 60 degrees Celsius, the woman and her family have no shelter, with all their possessions destroyed in the regime’s callous demolition. As Ahwazis, the family has no legal rights to complain about the crimes perpetrated against them and will receive no compensation, with the regime using this racist system as carte blanche to carry out such crimes on a daily basis.

These are the actions of the same Iranian regime which shamelessly and cynically exploits Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people to use as PR and to represent itself as a saviour and supporter of Arab freedom. Ahwazi Arabs know the obscenity of that lie all too well.

Rate this:

Ken O’Keefe is back with a band new video of himself ranting (give the sheeple what they want?) and doing his usual Tourettes-inspired performance. He tells us he reckons he might be arrested, and if he is going to get arrested (and whatever for, pray tell?) he will go on a hunger strike. YAWN. Well, it might be interesting if you actually were emotionally stimulated by that psychotic HERO/VICTIM schtick he’s into about himself. Because, as you know by now, 99% of the things he writes about or rants about have himself in the middle of them. What’s a narcissist to do if they can’t stop talking about the Most Fascinating of Subjects?

At any rate, the new video, to spare you having to see all 17 minutes of it yourself, as a public service, we provide a really quick rundown of the salient points.

And also the rest of it. Hitler couldn’t have written a better title, could he?
Ken dropped the stuff about Zionism being the problem. For all the years and years Palestinians have been pounding the reality that they oppose those who oppress them, and those who oppress them are Zionists, they have no problem with Jews and have nothing to do with the racist rants going on. No. That is old school, that is too “politically correct” and the Palestinians’ will doesn’t matter any more. For Ken, the problem isn’t Zionism, it’s Jews, no nuance.

Anyway, here are some choice bits: Hitler Ken talks about the MAJOR problems of everyone (else) in the whole damned activist world making videos about current events while he has been laying low, but busy, so busy. Oh, Laying Low is what got him into all the trouble with his Fans in the first place. He put on a big show to get a lot of money ASAP for something no one quite understood and which we wrote about here and here and here and here, warning people it was a scam, but people got scammed. His entire team challenged him and like all his teams in the history of Kendom, LEFT HIM and couldn’t stand to see his ugly face ever again. And like all these events, they are “idiots and agents” (left out clowns this time). He goes on for a while about how all those other people are horrible and [shock, horror] how they want him to prove that he is innocent after all the accusations. Somehow, Ken doesn’t think he has to prove his innocence. People just have to believe him. Oh, he DOES have a mickey mouse “statement” (unsigned and hilarious as all hell) on his site. Claims that is enough to keep the plebes satisfied, so they better STFU if they expect him to prove the accusations against him as false. Uhm. OKAY.

But, the brilliant thing is this: “I control the money!” he says with a wry smile.

Yeah.
That’s the problem Kenny boy.

People would like the money BACK, or that something actually is done with it THAT IS THE PROJECT THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE GETTING.

But Ken doesn’t “Do” projects that are actually going to serve the purposes for their creation, as we will point out very shortly.

Ken says that his purpose is to be a Lure for the Bait.
Uh, yes… try to figure that one out on your own. In “my” dictionary it sounds like “Controlled Opposition”, so in this, he actually does seem to finally say something that makes sense in its own roundabout way.

He’s says he’s going “back to the Jewnited States” soon. The land of Jewish Banksters. He is FORCED to use a USA passport (yeah, sure… first they force you to go to the Jewnited States, then they make sure you use a USA passport to do it, the nerve!) He’s pretty sure he’s going to get arrested, so he preventively told us he will hunger strike, because Ken’s Rights are sacrosanct. He assures us he would not commit suicide.

Then we get to the up closse and personal portion of the video. He brags about his girlfriend who has many talents including telling the World War II story – (the Greatest Story Never Told, all that Hitler lovefest stuff). In the video we get him doing a little less of “come to yer uncle” that we had grown accustomed to, and instead have an “Against All Odds” romp video of them in the sunset, where at a certain point it looks like she is trying to see if there is something in his shorts. It’s pretty tacky, but we have gotten used to tacky from the Ken and GF team. And yes, we can deal with his being overwhelmed with lust/love for her, but when he says that when a woman like her shows interest in a man “You wouldn’t even THINK for a second before you’d be with her, or maybe you’re homosexual”, you have to fight to hold back the vomit.

And, that’s pretty much that! He said the J-word, he coupled it with other triggers including Pedo and Satanists, (oh, never mind that one of the people in the campaign promoting and pimping for his World Citizen Solution had THIS cool picture of what is commonly known as Lucifer as his icon on facebook). Ken’s speaking such “truth to power!”

At any rate, we know, yes.. we know that this WCS will end up like everything else he does… end up being all spent in the RUNNING of the thing.. the THING never ever happens!! (Trade not Aid, Samouni Project, Ferry to Gaza, Tahrir 4 Gaza… where did all that money (or all that little money in some less successful Go Fund Ken’s Ego campaigns) go? It sure didn’t go to Palestinians in any way other than them being a background for his own showing off of his major ego.

You don’t believe me? Well, let’s have a look at just ONE project, shall we? ALOHA PALESTINE.

It had big name promotors, Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn, Lauren Booth, Alexei Sayle (well, little big names, but we aren’t picky right now, it was a European-based project, but he did insert all kinds of inspirational Gandhi and Nelson Mandela quotes in there). He went around promoting it with Lauren Booth and made quite a flashy little video with animation of a cool looking ship.

Got a LOT of money.

This is the ferry… well, not really. This is the ANIMATION of the FERRY, because that is as far as he ever intended to have it go. Here are the returns found at the Companies House. Oh, of course, no taxes paid, it was a CIC, all the money is clean. Because you are doing something for the benefit of society and the community. Ken’s society and community are evidently his own little ring of people who make the money while the project develops…..but then, the project goes kaput and all that money… DONATED MONEY from basically normal people who have to work for a living and scrimp and save, but always try to keep anything extra aside for those who need help and money more than they do. In this case, he used THE PALESTINIANS, and gave them nothing in return.

Look at the accounts filed, available for anyone to peruse on the Companies House site.

£36,690 was spent in ADMINISTRATIVE EXPENSES out of £36,888
LET THAT SINK IN…. £36,690 spent to have £198 that could be used for the ferry!
And that was just the FIRST YEAR! in the second year, it went in the hole £2091.

£0.00 for the Palestinians. People pimping for Ken, pushing for others to donate, then, lots of money coming in and NOTHING spent on anything but Ken and his cronies. Let that sink in. It makes his rants just seem like some hot bullshit from a snake oil salesman.

This text was written by Dyab Abu Jahjah in 2012. This is his site.
Relative to revolutions all around the world, the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions are historical miracles and a shining example of non-violent, civilized uprisings. The Yemeni revolution, in its insistence on non-violence and its discipline, is truly amazing, as is the revolution in Bahrain. The Syrian revolution, in its enormous sacrifices in the face of a ruthless killing machine, is a historical epic. The revolutions in Libya is an epitome of effectiveness.
We cannot just mention Libya in passing because the Libyan case has become the favorite example for conspiracy theorists and doubters in the revolution. It is true that the intervention by NATO is complicated and is definitely not innocent. But it is also true that the agenda of the Libyan revolutionaries is not identical to NATO’s agenda. This divergence will emerge slowly but surely because the relationship between the Libyan revolution and NATO is not one of submission. European powers wanted to secure the oil contracts that they had signed with Kaddafi and at the same time appear to support the Arab revolution after their shameful support for Ben-Ali and Mubarak to the very end. The Libyan revolutionaries wanted air cover in their confrontation with Kaddafi’s barbaric killing machine. and unfortunately no Arab or Islamic country was able to provide such a cover. Hence, a deal was struck, and we must look at this deal from the point of view of shared interests. In the end, Libya has been liberated and there are no occupation forces and no NATO mandate on Libya. As for the oil contracts, they are a matter of commerce because oil is nothing more than a commodity that is sold by the state based on the people’s interests; it does not represent our dignity or our honor. Isn’t it better for a free Libyan people to trade and cooperate with foreign countries to benefit itself rather than for a dictator like Kaddafi to do the same thing while oppressing his people for the benefit of himself and his sons with their many lovers?

A free people determines its path by itself and no one can claim any longer that a deranged tyrant knows his people’s interests better than the people. The alternative, for those who are always asking about alternatives, as if we were replacing one totalitarian government with another, is always the ballot box. What’s more important, and what is true in any region in the Arab World, is that foreign intervention is a small detail in the midst of the massive historical movement that the Arab revolution represents, which neither the reactionary oil oligarchies nor Western imperialism will be able to co-opt no matter how hard they try. The old regimes and their remnants will fail in their attempt to paint the Arab revolution as a western conspiracy to dethrone them because of their achievements in pursuing the interests of the people. The people know that the historical trend in our region is one of revolution, and they are aware of the West’s attempts to intervene and co-opt the revolution, but they are also capable of thwarting these attempts. In Syria, for example, the revolutionary forces have rejected military intervention and instead called for international protection and observers, and some insist on most being Arab, in spite of the enormous oppression and killing. Those who accuse the Syrian revolutionaries of being traitors are similar to someone who denies a seriously ill patient medicine because that medicine is made in Paris or London and is being distributed by United Nations agencies.

WRITTEN BY SHIBLI ZAMAN
All kinds of scum are defending Bashar al-Assad following his attack upon the people of Idlib with chemical weapons. I’ve had to respond to many of these heartless people who prefer their vacuous Alex Jones based conspiracy theories over human life but…seriously…at least 10 kids under the age of 11 died an excruciating death so I am just way too PISSED OFF to carry on. But I want to address this Russian LIE that they supposedly bombed a munitions depot where the rebels were storing Sarin gas.

Sarin gas is highly unstable and is easily rendered inert.

“Decomposes thermally to form a variety of phosphorus containing products as well as propylene. The rate of decomposition increases with increase in temperature, and in the presence of acids. At the boiling point of GB, under atmospheric conditions, decomposition is fairly rapid.”
[PubChem: https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/sarin…]

The Russian account of having bombed a Sarin containing depot is scientifically impossible. If you bomb Sarin with incendiaries, it will be rendered INERT by the exceedingly high temperature of any blast. It just takes 150 °C to decompose Sarin into various forms of phosphorous. The average missle emits 2,480 °C (4,500 °F) which is way beyond what it would take to completely erase any Sarin.

Then these imbeciles are claiming that pictures of the White Helmets wearing only gas masks and no HAZMAT suits means there couldn’t have been a Sarin attack. Make up your minds! Either there was a gas attack or there wasn’t. Russia ADMITTED that Sarin was released upon the population because even they weren’t stupid enough to deny the overwhelmingly obvious! And to debunk this nonsense about the White Helmets not wearing Hazmat suits, by the time they and other personnel would have arrived in the area the Sarin would have dissipated. This is from the Center for Disease Control: “Because it evaporates so quickly, sarin presents an immediate, but short-lived, threat.” [https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/sarin/basics/facts.asp]

Finally, as Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commanding officer of the British Armed Forces Joint Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear (CBRN) Regiment, said:

“Axiomatically, if you blow up Sarin, you destroy it…It’s very clear it’s a Sarin attack…The view that it’s an al-Qaeda or rebel stockpile of Sarin that’s been blown up in an explosion, I think is completely unsustainable and completely untrue.” [BBC]

So, the bottom line is that there are two versions of events here:

1) Tons of eye witnesses on the ground testify to the Russian/Syrian aerial bombardment of chemical weapons. There are PICTURES of the spent casings and tanks on the ground. The entire world knows Bashar and the Russians did it, and the SAA, Russia and Iran are the only people ON EARTH saying otherwise.

2) The SAA first released a statement saying they did nothing. That was a lie that Russia themselves ratted out when they admitted that they bombed Idlib. The first question is: Why were they bombing a residential area in Idlib? They claim that they were targeting a munitions depot that contained chemical weapons.

The SAA/Russian explanation is 100% a lie that can easily be proven by SCIENCE in that if they bombed a stockpile of Sarin gas, it would not release and kill everyone. It would be rendered completely inert and USELESS.

In the end you can’t argue with basic CHEMISTRY AND SCIENCE.

And there are a bunch of kids who choked to death on their own bodily fluids, and the fact that people are defending Bashar after that pisses me off immeasurably. So be warned: My tolerance level for nonsense when it comes to this tragic and painful subject is ZERO.

“What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.”

In analyzing the rhetoric and propaganda of several hundred militant “fringe” political and social groups across the political spectrum, I have identified a number of specific traits or behaviors that tend to represent the extremist “style”…

1. CHARACTER ASSASSINATION.

Extremists often attack the character of an opponent rather than deal with the facts or issues raised. They will question motives, qualifications, past associations, alleged values, personality, looks, mental health, and so on as a diversion from the issues under consideration. Some of these matters are not entirely irrelevant , but they should not serve to avoid the real issues.

Extremists object strenuously when this is done to them, of course!

2. NAME-CALLING AND LABELING.

Extremists are quick to resort to epithets (racist, subversive, pervert, hate monger, nut, crackpot, degenerate, un-American, anti-semite, red, commie, nazi, kook, fink, liar, bigot, and so on) to label and condemn opponents in order to divert attention from their arguments and to discourage others from hearing them out. These epithets don’t have to be proved to be effective; the mere fact that they have been said is often enough.

3. IRRESPONSIBLE SWEEPING GENERALIZATIONS.

Extremists tend to make sweeping claims or judgments on little or no evidence, and they have a tendency to confuse similarity with sameness. That is, they assume that because two (or more) things, events, or persons are alike in some respects, they must be alike in most respects. The sloppy use of analogy is a treacherous form of logic and has a high potential for false conclusions.

4. INADEQUATE PROOF FOR ASSERTIONS.

Extremists tend to be very fuzzy about what constitutes proof, and they also tend to get caught up in logical fallacies, such as post hoc ergo propter hoc (assuming that a prior event explains a subsequent occurrence simply because of their before and after relationship). They tend to project wished-for conclusions and to exaggerate the significance of information that confirms their beliefs while derogating or ignoring information that contradicts them. They tend to be motivated by feelings more than facts, by what they want to exist rather than what actually does exist. Extremists do a lot of wishful and fearful thinking.

5. ADVOCACY OF DOUBLE STANDARDS.

Extremists generally tend to judge themselves or their interest group in terms of their intentions, which they tend to view very generously, and others by their acts, which they tend to view very critically. They would like you to accept their assertions on faith, but they demand proof for yours. They tend to engage in special pleading on behalf of themselves or their interests, usually because of some alleged special status, past circumstances, or present disadvantage.

6. TENDENCY TO VIEW THEIR OPPONENTS AND CRITICS AS ESSENTIALLY EVIL.

To the extremist, opponents hold opposing positions because they are bad people, immoral, dishonest, unscrupulous, mean-spirited, hateful, cruel, or whatever, not merely because they simply disagree, see the matter differently, have competing interests, or are perhaps even mistaken.

7. MANICHAEAN WORLDVIEW.

Extremists have a tendency to see the world in terms of absolutes of good and evil, for them or against them, with no middle ground or intermediate positions. All issues are ultimately moral issues of right and wrong, with the “right” position coinciding with their interests. Their slogan is often “those who are not with me are against me.”

8. ADVOCACY OF SOME DEGREE OF CENSORSHIP OR REPRESSION OF THEIR OPPONENTS AND/OR CRITICS.

This may include a very active campaign to keep opponents from media access and a public hearing, as in the case of blacklisting, banning or “quarantining” dissident spokespersons. They may actually lobby for legislation against speaking, writing, teaching, or instructing “subversive” or forbidden information or opinions. They may even attempt to keep offending books out of stores or off of library shelves, discourage advertising with threats of reprisals, and keep spokespersons for “offensive” views off the airwaves or certain columnists out of newspapers. In each case the goal is some kind of information control. Extremists would prefer that you listen only to them. They feel threatened when someone talks back or challenges their views.

9. TEND TO IDENTIFY THEMSELVES IN TERMS OF WHO THEIR ENEMIES ARE: WHOM THEY HATE AND WHO HATES THEM.

Accordingly, extremists may become emotionally bound to their opponents, who are often competing extremists themselves. Because they tend to view their enemies as evil and powerful, they tend, perhaps subconsciously, to emulate them, adopting the same tactics to a certain degree. For example, anti-Communist and anti-Nazi groups often behave surprisingly like their opponents. Anti-Klan rallies often take on much of the character of the stereotype of Klan rallies themselves, including the orgy of emotion, bullying, screaming epithets, and even acts of violence. To behave the opposite of someone is to actually surrender your will to them, and “opposites” are often more like mirror images that, although they have “left” and “right” reversed, look and behave amazingly alike.

10. TENDENCY TOWARD ARGUMENT BY INTIMIDATION.

Extremists tend to frame their arguments in such a way as to intimidate others into accepting their premises and conclusions. To disagree with them is to “ally oneself with the devil,” or to give aid and comfort to the enemy. They use a lot of moralizing and pontificating, and tend to be very judgmental. This shrill, harsh rhetorical style allows them to keep their opponents and critics on the defensive, cuts off troublesome lines of argument, and allows them to define the perimeters of debate.

11. USE OF SLOGANS, BUZZWORDS, AND THOUGHT-STOPPING CLICHES.

For many extremists shortcuts in thinking and in reasoning matters out seem to be necessary in order to avoid or evade awareness of troublesome facts and compelling counter-arguments. Extremists generally behave in ways that reinforce their prejudices and alter their own consciousness in a manner that bolsters their false confidence and sense of self-righteousness.

12. ASSUMPTION OF MORAL OR OTHER SUPERIORITY OVER OTHERS.

Most obvious would be claims of general racial or ethnic superiority–a master race, for example. Less obvious are claims of ennoblement because of alleged victimhood, a special relationship with God, membership in a special “elite” or “class,” and a kind of aloof “highminded” snobbishness that accrues because of the weightiness of their preoccupations, their altruism, and their willingness to sacrifice themselves (and others) to their cause. After all, who can bear to deal with common people when one is trying to save the world! Extremists can show great indignation when one is “insensitive” enough to challenge these claims.

13. DOOMSDAY THINKING.

Extremists often predict dire or catastrophic consequences from a situation or from failure to follow a specific course, and they tend to exhibit a kind of “crisis-mindedness.” It can be a Communist takeover, a Nazi revival, nuclear war, earthquakes, floods, or the wrath of God. Whatever it is, it’s just around the corner unless we follow their program and listen to the special insight and wisdom, to which only the truly enlightened have access. For extremists, any setback or defeat is the “beginning of the end!”

14. BELIEF THAT IT’S OKAY TO DO BAD THINGS IN THE SERVICE OF A “GOOD” CAUSE.

Extremists may deliberately lie, distort, misquote, slander, defame, or libel their opponents and/or critics, engage in censorship or repression, or undertake violence in “special cases.” This is done with little or no remorse as long as it’s in the service of defeating the Communists or Fascists or whomever. Defeating an “enemy” becomes an all-encompassing goal to which other values are subordinate. With extremists, the end justifies the means.

Extremists have an unspoken reverence for propaganda, which they may call “education” or “consciousness-raising.” Symbolism plays an exaggerated role in their thinking, and they tend to think imprecisely and metamorphically. Harold D. Lasswell, in his book, *Psychopathology and Politics*, says, “The essential mark of the agitator is the high value he places on the emotional response of the public.” Effective extremists tend to be effective propagandists. Propaganda differs from education in that the former teaches one what to think, and the latter teaches one how to think.

16. HYPERSENSITIVITY AND VIGILANCE.

Extremists perceive hostile innuendo in even casual comments; imagine rejection and antagonism concealed in honest disagreement and dissent; see “latent” subversion, anti-semitism, perversion, racism, disloyalty, and so on in innocent gestures and ambiguous behaviors. Although few extremists are clinically paranoid, many of them adopt a paranoid style with its attendant hostility and distrust.

17. USE OF SUPERNATURAL RATIONALE FOR BELIEFS AND ACTIONS.

Some extremists, particularly those involved in “cults” or extreme religious movements, such as fundamentalist Christians, militant Zionist extremists, and members of mystical and metaphysical organizations, claim some kind of supernatural rationale for their beliefs and actions, and that their movement or cause is ordained by God. In this case, stark extremism may become reframed in a “religious” context, which can have a legitimizing effect for some people. It’s surprising how many people are reluctant to challenge religiously motivated extremism because it represents “religious belief” or because of the sacred-cow status of some religions in our culture.

18. PROBLEMS TOLERATING AMBIGUITY AND UNCERTAINTY.

Indeed, the ideologies and belief systems to which extremists tend to attach themselves often represent grasping for certainty in an uncertain world, or an attempt to achieve absolute security in an environment that is naturally unpredictable or perhaps populated by people with interests opposed to their own. Extremists exhibit a kind of risk-aversiveness that compels them to engage in controlling and manipulative behavior, both on a personal level and in a political context, to protect themselves from the unforeseen and unknown. The more laws or “rules” there are that regulate the behavior of others–particular their “enemies”–the more secure extremists feel.

19. INCLINATION TOWARD “GROUPTHINK.”

Extremists, their organizations, and their subcultures are prone to a kind of inward-looking group cohesiveness that leads to what Irving Janis discussed in his excellent book Victims of Groupthink. “Groupthink” involves a tendency to conform to group norms and to preserve solidarity and concurrence at the expense of distorting members’ observations of facts, conflicting evidence, and disquieting observations that would call into question the shared assumptions and beliefs of the group.

Right-wingers (or left-wingers), for example, talk only with one another, read material that reflects their own views, and can be almost phobic about the “propaganda” of the “other side.” The result is a deterioration of reality-testing, rationality, and moral judgment. With groupthink, shared illusions of righteousness, superior morality, persecution, and so on remain intact, and those who challenge them are viewed with skepticism and hostility.

20. TENDENCY TO PERSONALIZE HOSTILITY.

Extremists often wish for the personal bad fortune of their “enemies,” and celebrate when it occurs. When a critic or an adversary dies or has a serious illness, a bad accident, or personal legal problems, extremists often rejoice and chortle about how they “deserved” it. I recall seeing right-wing extremists celebrate the assassination of Martin Luther King and leftists agonizing because George Wallace survived an assassination attempt. In each instance their hatred was not only directed against ideas, but also against individual human beings.

21. EXTREMISTS OFTEN FEEL THAT THE SYSTEM IS NO GOOD UNLESS THEY WIN.

For example, if they lose an election, then it was “rigged.” If public opinion turns against them, it was because of “brainwashing.” If their followers become disillusioned, it’s because of “sabotage.” The test of the rightness or wrongness of the system is how it impacts upon them…

Written by Rahim Hamid, Ahwazi freelance journalist and human rights activist based in the USA

An Iranian regime militia shot an unarmed wheelchair-bound disabled Ahwazi activist dead in front of his wife and children in their home, apparently “revenge” for his civil rights activism.

The armed group belonging to the Basiji (also known as Sāzmān-e Basij-e Mostaz’afin), one of the five forces of the ‘Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution’, stormed into 39-year-old Saeed al-Bahrani’s house in the town of Koura in southern Ahwaz capital on Sunday evening, April 2, 2017, shooting him dead in front of his horrified wife and three children. The regime militiamen gave no reason for their actions, with al-Bahrani’s wife and family having no legal recourse despite this brutal murder.

Saeed, aged 39, was a tireless community activist, a Sunni cleric and a widely admired and respected local figure in the poverty-stricken town, who spent much of his life engaged in campaigning for civil rights and freedom for the marginalised Ahwazi people.

Koura county is one of the most populated and deprived areas affiliated to Mahshahr port city, this port is the capital of petrochemical industry of Iran, however, its Arab locals denied any basic rights and employment in oil and gas petrochemical complexes have been driven to live in medieval poverty.

According to Ahwazi rights groups and activists, such cold-blooded murders of activists by the regime’s troops and militias are routine. Ahwazi activists say that the continuing silence of UN and other international human rights organizations on the Iranian regime’s rule by terror, in which grotesque human rights abuses are just another tool of governance, effectively gives the regime carte blanche to continue.

Ahwazi Arab activists on 26 February 2017 has circulated an amateur video on social networking sites showing an Ahwazi citizen lying on the ground, having been shot at by an Iranian police officer in the Zaafaraniya district, west of the capital of Ahwaz.

The police shot at the young Ahwazi man ‘in cold blood’, hitting him in the right leg, when he refused to be searched by them.

The video shows the young man unconscious and soaked in blood, with a crowd of concerned and angry people around him, while the police sit in their patrol car nearby.

Sources confirmed that the police did not call an ambulance to take the injured man to hospital until some of the locals from the Zaafaraniya district intervened and took him to a hospital in Ahwaz City Centre themselves. There were conflicting reports about the injured man’s latest condition, with some saying he has died of his injuries.

This is the fourth time within the last few months that there has been an incident of this kind. On 9 February of 2017, a random shooting by Iranian soldiers killed a young Ahwazi man in Falahiyeh City and another citizen was wounded in the city of Shush on Wednesday 22 February by Iranian intelligence.

Raghad Abbas, three-year-old victim.

Also, Ahwazi human rights activists have reported on October 27 2016 the murder of a three-year-old girl, Raghad Abbas (pictured), who died instantly on being shot through the heart as she sat in the back of her parents’ car when Iranian security forces opened fire indiscriminately on the vehicle on Monday October 24th. Her father, Abbas Hassan Mashal Al-Sari, aged 41, who was driving the car, and her mother, Zahor Abdul-Sada Al-Sari, were also critically wounded in the shooting, which took place in the Alawi neighbourhood, a western suburb of the regional capital, Ahwaz. Neither of her parents were armed or involved in any illegal activities, and no reason has yet been given for the attack, nor has any apology been issued for the murder of the little girl. Immediately after the brutal slaying, the security officers responsible dragged the injured, newly bereaved father, Abbas Hassan, from the vehicle and arrested him as his traumatized, also injured wife looked on, and as their daughter’s dead body sat in the back seat, before taking him to an undisclosed location.

The attack on the family’s vehicle was apparently part of another ongoing brutal crackdown by regime security forces on Ahwazi Arabs.

These random acts of violence are typical of the way the Iranian regime forces act in the Al-Ahwaz territories – taking pleasure in every opportunity to flaunt their complete control over every aspect of the civilians’ lives.

For years, the Ahwazi Arabs have been killed, shot, attacked, beaten, insulted and humiliated on a daily basis by the thugs of the Iranian regime, who act with impunity, secure in their knowledge that they have a carte blanche to act as they please.

As long as oil continues to flow from Ahwaz, many in the world seem quite prepared to turn a blind eye to the spilling of blood and shedding of tears of the dispossessed Ahwazi Arabs.

This is unacceptable. We pledge to continue to draw attention to the injustices being suffered by the Ahwazi Arab population until such time that justice and humanity will prevail.

For too long, Ahwazi Arabs have suffered in silence, the ultimate invisible victims. It is hard to understand just how isolated and betrayed the Ahwazi people feel, savagely persecuted by Iran for almost a century with the silent, treacherous complicity of the international community. Compounding this problem is the media blackout surrounding events in Ahwaz, with the current regime’s effective hermetic sealing off of the region assisted by the collusion of the world which is either wholly indifferent or swallows the Iranian regime’s obscene lie of ‘resistance to occupation’ wholesale.

Ahwazis face vast challenges in bringing attention to the plight of the people in a world constantly preoccupied with “more pressing concerns” and a region awash in systemic violence, much of it directly or indirectly courtesy of the same regime responsible for their suffering.

Need to mention that the core attention of the majority of Iranian rights groups has broadly been devoted to spotlighting the violations that are committed against persons that live in Tehran capital and central Persian regions. These organizations in their written goals claim that they are seeking democracy, civil freedom and putting an end to racial oppression and discriminations but such stated objects have never been put into action when they deal with the human rights issues linked to Ahwazi Arabs as well as other ethnic groups. Until about two years ago, there has not been even a simple statement or action by Iranian human rights organizations denouncing the execution and persecution perpetrated against the Arab people of Ahwaz. Only after many actions carried by Ahwazi activists only two or three organizations, among dozens of Iranian human rights organizations, took action by revealing the human rights violations in Ahwaz. The other organizations engaged in ultra-racist duplicity to evade highlighting the Ahwazi plight.

Despite living in the region which holds over 95 percent of the oil and gas resources claimed by Iran – the reason for the British backing of Iran’s 1925 annexation of Ahwaz in exchange for oil contracts – Ahwazi Arabs live in medieval poverty under an effective apartheid system, being viewed as inferiors due to their Arab ethnicity; most of the population exists below the poverty line, with limited or no access to jobs, education, healthcare, or even basic utilities such as electricity and gas or running water.

Rate this:

On December 13, the Russian propaganda website Sputnik tweeted a photo captioned “Syrian Army prepares to retake Palmyra.” The image showed four men on a truck assembling munitions. One wore an Afghan flag as a headscarf, and another was identified as a member of the Hazara Shia minority in Afghanistan.

A month later, as ISIS assaulted Syrian regime positions at Khanaser southeast of Aleppo, an Afghan member of the Fatemiyoun brigade shot a video showing Afghans waiting for airstrikes to help push ISIS back.

The often-forced participation of Afghans is one of the great untold stories of the Syrian Civil War. It is estimated that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has sent between 18,000-30,000 Shia Afghans to fight in Syria on the side of the Assad regime since 2015. This is part of the IRCG’s effort to shore up their frontlines after six years of bloody combat against numerous Sunni rebel groups. It is also part of a wider alliance of Shia militias, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, that have poured thousands of fighters into Syria. However, unlike Hezbollah or Iraqi supporters of the Syrian regime, the role of the Afghan recruits is complicated and tragic. There is compelling evidence that they are victims of human trafficking, recruited and exploited by Iran, and then sent to Syria to die in a foreign war.

The Hazara Shia are a Persian-speaking religious and ethnic minority located mostly in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Often persecuted, they usually end up in Iran after fleeing violence elsewhere. For example, they are victims of constant terror by Sunni jihadist groups in Pakistan. In February 2013, more than 100 were killed in a bombing in Quetta, which has been a frequent target. In June 2015, half a dozen were murdered and three businesses owned by Shia attacked. Similar attacks occurred in April and November 2015. In October 2016, gunmen shot up a bus and killed several Hazara women in Quetta. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Sunni jihadist group, claimed the attack was in response to the Afghan Shia’s role in the battle of Aleppo. On January 6, five Shia were murdered in a drive-by shooting. Al-Jazeera called the constant attacks on Shia in Pakistan a “sustained, targeted campaign of killings,” carried out by jihadists “once allied to the Pakistani state.” Caught up in this cauldron, Hazaras flee to Iran, where Iranian intelligence scoops them up and gives young men an offer they can’t refuse: Go die in Syria for the Ayatollah.

Afghanistan also has a population of several million Hazaras, who have been the subject of brutal persecution since the 19th century. Under the Taliban in the 1990s, they were subjected to discrimination and violence. Taliban commander Maulawi Mohammed Hanif told followers, “Hazaras are not Muslims; you can kill them.” As the Taliban creeps back toward Kabul, it has been targeting them again. In July 2016, more than 60 Hazaras were murdered in a bomb attack on a Hazara rights protest, and in November, their Baqir ul Olum mosque in Kabul was blown up. Vali Nasr of Johns Hopkins University believes that the ISIS attack might be “payback for Hazara fighting in Syria.” Clearly, a particularly vicious cycle exists: Iran uses Hazara Shia, rather than Iranians, to fight in Syria; this puts the Hazaras in danger of retaliation; this in turn forces Hazaras to flee to Iran, where they are recruited or forced to fight in Syria, beginning the cycle over again.

The Hazaras have suffered numerous casualties in Syria, where they are often referred to as “cannon fodder” or “meat shields” for the regime. In November 2016, a Syrian rebel Twitter account showed an image of a man they had captured who they claimed was an “Afghan.” Afghan army IDs and bank cards were found on other prisoners, sometimes with English on them. Their owners had died in Aleppo during 2016, and in some cases it is alleged they were child soldiers. Afghan parents have been interviewed who said they were surprised to find their sons had gone to Syria. One woman told BBC Pashto that her son left Kabul for Iran to find work and was sent to Syria and killed. By July 2015, more than 700 had been killed, according to an Iranian news website.

In 2013, two years after protests broke out against Assad and the civil war began, observers first mentioned the Hazara community in Syria in the context of migrants. They were living near the Sayyida Zainab shrine in Damascus as refugees. At the time there were several thousand. Their participation in the fighting was first noticed online in January 2014. By the following year, the IRGC-run Fatemiyoun brigade, made up of Hazaras, had been formed, and photos of its fighters were being circulated online.

How are they recruited? In the beginning, Iran enticed young men through cash. Afghans guarding the Sayyida Zainab shrine were described by The New York Times as facing “little choice if they wanted to support their families [back home].” In a tweet on January 27, Qalaat Al Mudiq, an academic and military analyst, wrote that Afghans are paid $600 per month and sent to Syria on regularly organized flights. Journalist Mirwais Afghan claimed in June 2016 that the amount was $450 per month. One woman told The Wall Street Journal that her brother was lured to a recruitment office in Mashhad. He received 20 days of training and religious indoctrination before being flown to Damascus. He was killed in November 2014. Another woman told the Pakistani newspaper Dawn that her 35-year-old husband was promised $750 a month and an Iranian residency permit. A report in The Guardian found the Iranian embassy in Kabul was paying middlemen to recruit fighters. The Christian Science Monitor interviewed an Afghan man in June 2016 who said recruiters from the IRGC’s Basij militia used to visit him daily to encourage him to go, saying, “We will send you to Syria and when you come back we will give you an Iranian passport, a house, and money.”

Most Afghans said they were sent on “suicide missions” and that “Afghan lives have no value” to their IRGC commanders. Recruits said that in Iran many Afghans were coerced and threatened with being kidnapped or killed if they didn’t sign up. When Afghans die, their families are told their sons are “martyrs” and promised money, which never arrives.

A BBC investigation in April revealed that many Afghan recruits flee their units and try to get to the EU. One man said he was born in Isfahan, Iran, to Afghan refugees and lived as a second-class citizen. Then the IRCG came and promised him a passport if he went to Syria. Once he joined, he received two weeks of training. The Iranian commanders took his cellphone. He said he was sent to take a sector. If the sector were taken, he was told, he and his fellow soldiers were to hand it over to their Syrian army allies.

Another Afghan in Greece—one of 200,000 who came to Europe in 2015—told the BBC that he was arrested in Iran. At the Asgar Abad detention camp, he was offered the chance to be deported to Afghanistan or go to Syria. After a year of service in Syria, he didn’t receive a promised Iranian residency permit, but was threatened with deportation if he didn’t go back to Syria. He deserted like many thousands of others and fled to the EU.

Iran has employed other methods as well, such as recruitment videos and religious propaganda. France24 has reported that Shia clerics were dispatched by Iran to aid in the recruitment. Sometimes outright violence is used. “One 17-year-old said he had been forced to fight without being given the opportunity to refuse,” the NGO Human Rights Watch reported.

There is unquestionably a large recruiting pool for Iran to exploit. There were more than two million Afghan refugees in Iran in 2016, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. One of those refugees was a man named Murad who was captured by Syrian rebels. He told Der Spiegel’s Christoph Reuter that he was arrested in Iran and falsely accused of selling drugs. “For fifteen days he was beaten and whipped,” Reuter wrote. Then one day at Evin Prison in Tehran, Murad received a visitor wearing the IRGC’s green uniform. “Do you want the final five years of your sentence commuted?” the man asked. Soon Murad was off to Syria to fight.

In May 2016, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised the families of the Afghans who had fallen in Syria. “Martyrs who die on this path are privileged,” he told his audience. “In fact your children have created a shield with their life to protect the holy shrines from these evil [forces]. Therefore their status is very important.” Iran denies the Afghans are mercenaries or coerced. The IRGC claims that they go to Syria for religious and patriotic reasons.

But the evidence proves that the IRGC has been targeting tens of thousands of vulnerable people to fight Assad’s war in Syria. Recruiters are paid a commission by the Iranian government to target Afghans rather than Iranians. The government has established a deep network throughout Hazara communities in Iran and Afghanistan, targeting the poor and those seeking work. It has lured them from Pakistan. In Iran it uses coercion by threatening those who refuse with deportation. It also offers passports and residency permits that it does not provide, hoping that the fighters will die as “martyrs” before they ask for compensation. It also recruits prisoners, paying them less than other recruits and promising them time off their sentences. It flies the recruits back and forth to Syria on civilian planes used by the IRGC. The Afghans have no travel documents, which means they are controlled entirely by the IRGC while in Syria and cannot flee. Underage teens are also recruited.

Clearly, Iran’s recruitment of refugees and asylum seekers violates UN guidelines that call on nations to “prevent the military recruitment of refugees in camps and settlements” and to “ensure that measures are taken to prevent the recruitment of refugees by government armed forces or organized armed groups.” This amounts to human trafficking.

The IRGC controls large parts of the Iranian economy and is intertwined with the leading political and military institutions of the state. Its direct and documented involvement in the violation of the rights of refugees provides more evidence of why it should be designated a terrorist organization. The Trump administration was discussing designating the IRGC in early February; the abuse of Afghan refugees adds evidence in support of the need for the U.S. and the international community to recognize Iran’s misdeeds. By providing payment and transport to Afghans who are sent to Syria under the command structure of the IRGC, Iran is also violating the Geneva Convention as spelled out in the Protocol Additional of June 1977 regarding the use of mercenaries as combatants in war.

New sanctions should be put on Iran, including sanctions specifically targeting the IRGC. The international community should target areas of the Iranian economy linked to the use and abuse of Afghan refugees, such as Iran’s use of commercial and other flights to move them back and forth. The U.S. should also call for an investigation into abuses committed by the IRGC in Syria, and members of the International Criminal Court should call for an investigation into the role and exploitation of Hazara Afghans as part of a wider probe into human rights violations in the Syrian conflict. Only by holding Iran accountable for its actions, rather than welcoming Iranian diplomats as was done by former Secretary of State John Kerry, can Iran be put on notice that its continued behavior does not put it above the law. The IRGC has continually flaunted national and international laws. The case of the Afghan refugees sent to die in Syria sheds a light on how Iran can finally be held to account.

Presentation by the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz

WRITTEN BY RAHIM HAMID*
A delegation from the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz confirmed “that the Ahwazi cause is the real weakness of Iran, if it were recognized as a state that is occupied by Iran, it would be a fatal blow to the Iranian regime’s back and all Iranian interference in the internal affairs of the region. They explained that “the Persians’ own space is less than half of Iran, and the rest belongs to a variety of components of Arabs of Ahwaz, Turks of Azerbaijan, Baluch of Baluchistan and Kurds of Kurdistan, and this is yet further proof of the weakness of Iran. During the seminar that is entitled “Mechanisms for recognition of the state of Ahwaz”, which was held yesterday in the presence of a number of Bahraini deputies, the delegation of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz said, “Arab states realize the weakness of Iran, we do not know why they do not want to take advantage of these points, the Council of the Bahraini House of Representatives has made a great proposal that is to recognize Ahwaz as an independent state, and we hope that the rest of the parliaments of the Arab States follow this step to recognize our cause of Ahwaz, and we will explore ways of implementing the initiative launched by the Council of Representatives of Bahrain. ”

According to sources, the deputies will discuss in the coming days with a delegation of Ahwaz a variety of mechanisms to implement the former parliamentary proposal to recognize the State of Ahwaz, and how to reintroduce it in the House of Representatives again.”

The Bahraini deputies, in their proposal, stressed that Bahrain is the first to support the right of Ahwaz and support the right of this people to defend itself, they stressed the just cause of Ahwazi freedom and announced upcoming initiatives to internationalize it. Raising the proposal by the House of Representatives to demand recognition of Ahwaz as an occupied Arab state has been attacked by the Iranian media, accusing the Kingdom of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia of attempts to destabilise the national security of the country following the memorandum submitted by the Bahraini House of Representatives to the Parliament in order to recognize it as an occupied Arab state and should support it by every legal means in all levels, not only politically but also in the human rights area and through the media.

MP Issa Turki said the issue of Ahwaz is an Arab cause that has been forgotten, and this term will change after the mobility of Ahwazis, it is a human rights issue par excellence, and requires us to provide support and assistance to this just cause, especially in the international circles, so that we can be the voice of this issue calling on the Arab League to adopt the cause of Ahwaz based on the principles of justice and humanity that is consistent with the legal principles enshrined in international law.

For his part, Chairman of the Human Rights Committee MP Mohammed Almarafi said, addressing himself to Ahwazis, “Your cause is the cause of all the Arabs, we will support you to give this issue all the legitimate channels through Gulf Cooperation Council, the Arab League, and the United Nations Council”, and he emphasized the granting of the Ahwazi Arab people of their rights and rejecting what is practiced on them as unspeakable abuses. “We call on the international community to take notice of Ahwazi human rights, this situation affects international peace, and the Kingdom of Bahrain is a forerunner in taking into account all rights of peoples, and Ahwaz was, in fact, a state and we support them in order so that their state is returned, and every human being who has the power to support it should exercise all kinds of pressure on the Iranian regime, making the Ahwazi case a core issue.

As former MP Nasser Al Fadhala said, “It is beautiful to see the House of Representatives of Bahrain welcoming the case of Ahwazi Arabs in an unprecedented way. We spent years in support of the Ahwazi, and it has been our wish to hold a conference for Ahwazis in Bahrain, and the House of Representatives can provide high moral support to the political elite of Ahwaz.”

Two members of the Executive Committee of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz, during the seminar said that approximately one-third of Iran’s waters and more than 95% of the oil and gas claimed by Iran is located in Ahwaz, also Ahwaz includes agricultural wealth in the palm dates, wheat, barley, corn, sugarcane, citrus and vegetables, mineral iron, mercury resources. He explained that the Ahwazi oil is the lightest oil in the world and is used in many industries. The independence of Ahwaz will transform Iran into a weak state. They added that the Ahwaz population ranges between 10 and 12 million and is rising. There have been 12 popular uprisings since 1925 against the Iranian occupation and they have given many martyrs for the return of Arab sovereignty of Ahwaz, showing the world, despite all media blackout and global lack of attention, that the Arab people did not kneel to the occupation.

Bringing the Ahwazi cause to greater public awareness

They added that Iranian violations in Ahwaz are countless, most notably the executions in the streets and that is not limited to men but includes women and children, as well as mass arrests, unfair courts, and dissemination of drug. There is denial of employment to Ahwazis, as well as the Ahwazi environment being destroyed by building dams on the rivers Ahwazi, diverting its waters into the depth of the Persian provinces, and this criminality against Ahwazi people, has resulted in the draining of the marshes. The regime not only confiscates Ahwazi lands, but they began to demolish Ahwazi homes, preventing the people from learning the Arabic language and imposing the Persian language. There has been a ban placed on the wearing of traditional clothing in regime institutions, preventing the naming of children with Arab names and the changing of the names of all Ahwazi Arab places into Persian. Towns have been built for settlers with full support for them, giving them the jobs denied to Arabs. This is to bring about demographic change to the Ahwazi areas. There are also common criminal activities against the people, such as shooting at civilians and many other crimes that need seminars to shed light on them.

The members of the Executive Committee of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz, during the seminar, displayed clips of the torture of children and prisoners practiced by the Iranian regime against Ahwazis, surprising the attendees at how the Iranian regime advocates human rights in Bahrain, which commits all these crimes in Ahwaz.

They said, “Resistance of Ahwazis, after 3 months of occupation, started and continued through several methods such as of adherence to Arabic language and holding seminars and organizing demonstrations and protests in Ahwaz, and demonstrations in the Diaspora, there are many revolutions that broke out on Ahwazi land, but with great regret, the media blackout dealt a painful blow to our struggle and that is why people have heard little about the Ahwazi plight that is a human rights cause deserving of all the world’s support and solidarity.

The delegation said Iran has an expansionist project, as the region will not see peace and security, but should create a deterrent project to Iranian expansionism, which was started from the days of the Shah, but now it is wearing the clothes of religion, starting from the rule of Khomeini, so with the Liberation of Ahwaz, Iran would lose the current means for the success of its expansion, all its oil from Ahwaz to destabilize the Arab countries. The Ahwazi people, for 91 years under oppression, had to move to European countries to hold demonstrations , seminars, fund human rights organizations and start political movements and media outlets in Europe with the aim of moving the Western media.”

The Bahraini deputies stated they know the history of Al-Ahwaz and violations that the people are suffering and their stolen nation, their human rights denied, and this increases their belief in justice, as Ahwaz is a continuation of the Elam civilization period that lasted for 7000 years, stretching from Iraqi Basra to the Strait of Hormuz, an area of 375,000 km, which includes many Arab cities, the most important are Abadan and Mohammerah, Ahwaz and Bushehr.

*Ahwazi Human Rights activist and freelance journalist based in the United States

Rate this:

Certainly, by now we’ve all seen the tear-jerking, heart-rending tale of the American family of Syrian origin whose relatives (who had obtained a visa and had a nice house waiting for them in Allentown Pennsylvania) were turned back to Syria due to the Trump Executive Order banning people from entering into the US if they were citizens of one of the seven predominantly Muslim countries, including Syria.

The family told their story several times to TV crews and even had a Go Fund Me set up for them to help defray their costs for this setback.

Well, all it takes is a tiny peek into their public content on Facebook to see that their story gets quite a bit less warm and fuzzy, they actually support a mass murderer. Ghassan Assali and his wife both have regime flag profile pictures, indeed, there is a lot of pro-regime content on (particularly) Ghassan’s page. One of his shared memes was celebrating that Hillary Clinton would have to “Go Away” rather than Assad. I left a comment on that meme (which Ghassan did not leave on the meme), and he sent me this message:

Which, in English means:

Everyone makes mistakes but thank God, Trump apologized for what happened and gave them a new visa and compensated them for everything. Now they’re on their way. There was a problem interpreting the order, which includes Islamists and terrorists only. The crushing [of the Syrian opposition translator’s note] is still going on.

Well, that’s some big news! The family is back on their way COMPENSATED FOR EVERYTHING!

Then why is there still the Go Fund Me active?

And apparently, Trump supporters don’t care enough to send money because the Organiser of the campaign had to leave this update:

As the organizer of this page, I feel compelled to speak publicly and respond to some of the comments made on this page regarding reports that the Assalis of Allentown voted for Trump. These reports are incorrect. They did not vote for any candidate, and more importantly, were vitally concerned about the safety of their loved ones in Syria. For that reason, they discussed the relative benefits of one candidate over the other, and as with many in the local Syrian community, voiced hope that Trump might bring about a safer world for their family. HOWEVER, they did not vote for him, period.
Even more important, however, is to keep in mind that their family members who have now been returned to Syria did not vote (obviously) and had no political convictions about the election in the U.S. They just knew that they had to get out of Syria. So, please do not hold any grudge against the people for whom this page was organized. I hope this answers any questions. If you have more, please send an email to the organizer of this page (me) and I will do my best to answer any questions. Peace, Susan

So, either Susan or Sarmad is lying: “Assali said her vote for Donald Trump was done out of a desire to see secure borders, though she didn’t expect one of her candidate’s chief campaign promises to be applied to her relatives, who are all Orthodox Christians with green cards.”

You see, Ghassan and his wife think Assad is the man protecting them and fighting Islamists and Terrorists, but at the same time, in televised interviews they claim that their family has even before the war had been persecuted for their religion. Oh… but they aren’t asking for Asylum, and at the same time, Assad is apparently the protector of the minorities, isn’t he?